


if i love you was a promise, would you break it if you're honest?

by teacupsandsheepskulls



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Santino is head of the Camorra, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Emotional Slow Burn From People Who Don’t Have Emotions, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Not canon compliant with the third movie, Psychopaths In Love, Santino and Gianna switch places (with a twist), Santino the Canonical Maladjusted Murder Puppy, Santino's father was not a good man, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsafe Sex, Violence as a love language, except possibly everything, kind of?, never thought i'd use that tag, secretly a game of fandom bingo, shameless Godfather cameos that actually advance the plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 164,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacupsandsheepskulls/pseuds/teacupsandsheepskulls
Summary: The head of the Camorra, Santino D’Antonio, is known to have clever hands and a cleverer mind. In another life, he might have been a world-class thief, but in this one, he's the head of the Camorra and one of the stronger of the Twelve Families of the High Table, as slippery as a shadow in the dark and more vicious than any of the killers in his retinue. He's also more than a little insane, if rumor holds true to form. So when he shows up in Viggo's living room asking John to play a game, John agrees.And somehow, they never stop playing.AU in which: Santino was always head of the Camorra, Gianna is quite a bit younger, Gianna wants to steal the Camorra, and Gianna offers a Marker to John Wick to kill her brother (his lover) and uses a rather different proposition than the one made in canon.
Relationships: Santino D'Antonio/John Wick
Comments: 30
Kudos: 93





	1. round i (you had to have him, and so you did)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by two fics: Pangea's "My Burning for You is Love", which is the inspiration for the first chapter, and lizard_witch's "Ending Badly", because I wanted to see this relationship at work with Santino in the height of his power. As in "Ending Badly", this is not a healthy relationship because they are not healthy people. Everyone in here is a terrible person, it's just degrees of relativity. 
> 
> But ah what fun we'll have.
> 
> I know in canon the D'Antonio house was in the city of Rome. I'm ignoring that, because a place like that is inherited, not bought, and I seriously doubt that previous generations of D'Antonios would have been arrogant enough to leave free entrances to their house in the catacombs of Rome. I'm also tweaking the rules of Markers for my purposes, and I haven’t seen the third movie, therefore third movie canon is irrelevant.

The head of the Camorra, Santino D’Antonio, is known to have clever hands and a cleverer mind. In another life, he might have been a world-class thief, but in this one, he's the head of the Camorra and one of the stronger of the Twelve Families of the High Table, as slippery as a shadow in the dark and more vicious than any of the killers in his retinue. He's also more than a little insane, if rumor holds true to form. 

So when Viggo hears that Santino D'Antonio might be setting his eyes on some of the Tarasov's best prizes and that he's coming into town on business, Viggo orders John Wick to kill him. He even calls in John's Marker to do it. 

"This will make a mess, Viggo," John tells him when the phone in his basement rings. 

"And if he lives, it will be a war," Viggo replies. "You know the terms of the Marker." 

John does. 

Still, he has other business to attend to first, and Santino isn't expected in New York for another two weeks. So Viggo tells John to attend to his open contracts by Thursday after next and make preparations in the meantime and Viggo will collect him afterward to discuss the terms of Santino D'Antonio's death on his own territory. John leaves a dozen men dead in the bathhouse level of the Red Circle that Thursday evening and emerges to find Viggo waiting for him in a car outside as if picking a child up from school rather than his favorite assassin from a murder scene with sirens already blaring in the distance. 

"Drink?" Viggo holds out a glass and, at John's shake of the head, pours a drink for himself anyway. "We'll discuss terms when we get there." 

John nods once and settles against the seat, assessing himself for injuries and finding only a few stray bruises. He'll have plenty of time left in the night to begin whatever plan Viggo has in mind to kill D'Antonio, a plan that Viggo, by his smoking and steady nursing of whiskey, is eager to get on with. John looks out the window, mentally counting the bullets remaining in his magazines, the state of his knives, whether he'll need to visit the tailor again before this endeavor begins, whether Viggo will give him enough time to sleep in the comfort of his own bed for a few hours before setting off. What Santino D'Antonio will be like when he sees death coming for him, how many bullets it will take for John to get there. They ride in silence on the way there and make their way to Viggo's penthouse in still more silence. 

And who should be there but Santino D'Antonio himself, languidly reclined in a chair with a drink in his hand and another set at the chair across from him like the king on his throne, as if he's not in the penthouse of a man who wishes to kill him alongside the man he wished to use for the task. 

To Viggo's credit, he recovers quickly. "Signor D'Antonio. To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

"I heard a troubling rumor that you wished me dead, Mr. Tarasov," Santino replies in an Italian accent like luxury velvet, beckoning his listener in with the promise of soft vowels to whisper fingers against paired with a lullaby formality in his elocution that warns against ever becoming comfortable in such a position. 

"Is that so?" 

"Naturally, it is troubling to learn such things about my friends, so I thought it best to come to the source." 

"Of course." A lesser man than Viggo would ask how Santino came into such knowledge, or try to deny it, but Viggo just sits across from him. 

By the smile curling on Santino's face, Viggo's stoicism is amusing. "For the sake of argument, how would you do it?" 

"For the sake of argument?" 

"Between friends, of course." Santino's eyes light on John like a moth with coals for feet. "Your Baba Yaga, I assume?" 

"Of course.” It has long been Viggo's point of pride, having the good fortune of finding John Wick first. "He is the best." 

"Only the best between friends?" In any other man, eyes that wide and that blue would be a neon sign of innocence and sweetness. But Santino wears them like a mask, the cherub blue rendered alien by something cold and flat behind them like a waft of rotting corpse cutting through a cloudless sky. "Tell me, Mr. Wick. How would you kill me?" 

John stares back at him in silence. 

"With his gun, I expect," Viggo says, as though discussing a business transaction. Which he is. 

"I expect so, yes," Santino says idly, not looking away from John. "Your Baba Yaga is so very talented with bullets. It does sommeliers everywhere proud to see their treasures in the hands of an artist. Though I will admit such messes tend not to be Mr. Wick's style. You called in a Marker?" 

"Yes," Viggo replies, because it doesn’t bear asking how he knew that. 

He turns to Viggo with his eyes glittering like cut glass. "Well, my friend, since you've gone to such trouble to send me your very best, I suppose it's only fair to give you a sporting chance." His eyes shift back to John, dancing in the low light. 

"Wouldn't be a sporting chance at all, putting you against Wick," Viggo says, eyeing Santino like he can't quite believe his good luck. "But I'm certainly willing to indulge you." 

Santino’s smile curls wider. "How about this, then?" He stands in one fluid motion, making his way to Viggo's bar and drawing a revolver out of his jacket, one palm up so that Viggo signals John not to draw his gun. "Since every game has a winner, and you win if he kills me, it is only fair to have a reward on my side, if I win." 

"Other than your life?" 

Santino chuckles. "Don't be dull. Life is something I already had. If you gain something by my death, then it is only fair that I should gain something by my life. And since you've brought Mr. Wick into play, well," his smile levels at John, "that just makes things so much more fun. So give me your word, in front of these witnesses." He nods to their respective bodyguards like they bore him. "On John Wick's Marker, Mr. Wick will get his chance to kill me, and his Marker will be considered paid when he takes it. If he refuses, or if you back out of the terms of our game, it will be considered defaulting the Marker with due penalties." 

Viggo looks to his guards, who nod warily. "On John Wick's Marker." Given that Santino just offered a free opportunity to kill him in Viggo's own living room, the Marker is all but irrelevant beyond a guarantee that John will follow through. 

Santino never looks away from John, as if he already knew Viggo couldn't help himself. "Give up your weapons, Mr. Wick. A sporting chance, you understand." 

Santino's female bodyguard glides alongside him. He lets her strip him of his guns and his knives knowing full well he'll need none of them, keeping his eyes on Santino. 

Santino’s bodyguards unholster their weapons, but he waves them down when Viggo's men tense. "You will get your one chance, I promise you. But take more than that and my people will shoot you." 

Viggo laughs. John simply waits. He only needs one chance to kill this man. 

"So, Mr. Wick, here is our game." Santino clicks the revolver magazine free and empties all the bullets out onto Viggo's bar, holding one up to the light where John can see. 

"Bang, and you work for him." 

The bullet slides into the magazine and Santino spins it, John watching his hands. 

"Click, and you work for me." 

He stops the magazine without looking down and slides it into place, John watching his fingers all the while. He steps into the middle of the room, away from anyone, holding the revolver by its muzzle to offer it to John. And John stays still, his eyes still fixed on Santino's hands as his mind turns over the gun, the magazine, the bullet. He looks up to find Santino staring at him, his blue eyes bright and alive enough to blind. 

John strides across the room to take the revolver, holding it to Santino's forehead. Santino's smile widens even as he leans into the gun. Behind him, he hears Viggo shifting, can almost smell the smug victory radiating off Viggo even as Santino's guards level their guns for John’s head looking very, _very_ nervous about this situation. 

Santino stares straight into his eyes, stares straight through him. "Well, Mr. Wick?" 

John feels his mind quiet and still as it only does when killing. Feels the weight of the gun in his hand. Then he pulls the trigger. 

It clicks. 

Santino laughs like breaking glass. "Very good, Mr. Wick." 

It takes a moment for Viggo to register that he's lost, and when he does, he snarls. "You tricked me, you sly fuck. You left the bullet out of the gun." 

"Did I?" Santino replies, not breaking eye contact with John. "Show him, Mr. Wick." 

John lowers the revolver with his eyes on Santino, freeing the magazine again to withdraw the one bullet and hold it up in his fingers. 

Viggo starts laughing, in disbelief if nothing else. "You really are insane." 

"Perhaps," Santino is still laughing, still not looking away from John. "It is my genuine pleasure to welcome you to the Camorra, Mr. Wick. A pleasure as always, Mr. Tarasov." He finally looks away from John as though he's not at all afraid of him, as if John didn't just play Russian roulette with a revolver to his forehead, stepping around John to carelessly flag his female bodyguard. "Give him back his weapons in the car, Ares. We've dinner to attend, and I wouldn't dream of having Mr. Wick not dressed for the occasion." 

"Stay," Viggo snaps, as though John is a dog he can order to roll over. 

Santino stops and looks at Viggo. This time, though, it's as if he's staring at the shit beneath his shoe. "You gave your word on John Wick's Marker, Mr. Tarasov, in front of a room full of witnesses. How might it look for you if the High Table were to learn that not only did you wish to kill me, but that you reneged on your word after taking a fair chance to do the job through my own generosity? And as for John Wick's Marker, well," his bodyguards level their guns at Viggo, though they don't look all that happy about it, "you know the consequences of failing to honor a Marker." 

They stare at each other. The bodyguards shift uncomfortably. Finally, Viggo sinks back into his chair, taking John's Marker from his pocket and pricking a thumb to lay a bloody print in it and tossing it on the table. "Burn in hell, Santino." 

"Likewise, Viggo." Santino turns back over his shoulder to fix on John once more, as though Viggo no longer exists. 

John is still standing there with the gun and the bullet, watching Santino D'Antonio. 

"Mr. Wick?” Santino says, a pleasant smile back in place like he is truly eager for John to come with him. “I do believe you'll enjoy this evening." 

John follows him at his right flank with Ares on the other side as if he always belonged there. Ares does give him his weapons back in the car, along with a sleek black dinner jacket in his measurements. John does, indeed, enjoy the evening, and by the end of it has more or less come to terms with his unexpected shift in employment. 

Santino never quite stops smiling, his dead blue eyes sparkling as they find John again and again. 

The more or less part of coming to terms with his unexpected shift in employment comes with the arrival of dawn, which is when John and Ares surface from yet another bloody mess and fall into step with Santino's bodyguards to sit once more in the car, which is quiet and smooth enough to feel like being suspended in water after a night of nothing but animation with deadly weapons. He lets his attention drift, only to look up with surprise to find that they're exiting the city, looking up with still more surprise to find that the car is pulling up in front of his house. 

He doesn't move until he hears, "Mr. Wick?" in a warm Italian accent, looking up to see Santino and Ares out of the car and standing beside the door, waiting. 

He blinks and follows, noticing Ares gesture for one of the bodyguards to get out of the car too. "Why are we at my house?" It doesn't bear asking how Santino knew his address. 

"I'm afraid we've reached the time of morning in which I have to be terribly rude," Santino sighs, glancing at his watch. "We have a flight to Rome in about four hours. Which means I have to be terribly rude and ask you to pack in a rush. Ares and I have business to finish for about the next two hours and then we'll come back for you." 

He knew that Santino was based primarily out of Rome, on the estate that’s been the seat of the D’Antonio family throne for a few centuries or so. The theoretical concept of what that would entail relative to John occurred to him sometime around three in the morning when he shot a cartel man in the kneecap with Santino at his back. "I thought you were in town for longer." 

"I was here for a bit of spot cleaning." Santino's lips quirk up. "Which went considerably faster than expected with you to contribute to the fun. The dons of the Five Families can tidy up the rest on their own." He sighs again, looking apologetic. "But since we did the work of a week in one night and the dons won't need you from this point, it doesn't do much good to leave you behind. Though it does mean I'm asking you to rush, and I'm sorry for that." 

It has the smell of a fight he's not destined to win. To be fair, he's used to getting on a plane for contracts at the last minute, and he's only resisting out of surprise at the suddenness of being asked to shed his life in New York, not any lack of will to follow Santino onto a plane in four hours. If anything, he's surprised by his own willingness to follow Santino onto a plane in four hours, but then, he's still humming from the previous eight hours. "I can't pack up the entire house before the flight." 

Which isn't exactly true. He doesn't have that much in the house, and he could probably pack anything important in two hours. 

"I know, and again, I'm sorry about that." Santino nods to the guard Ares pulled from the car, who waves. "Matteo will help you gather everything you need for now. We'll make arrangements for the rest later." 

John has a feeling Santino isn't all that sorry about it beyond the rudeness of it. To be fair, John is surprised to find he's not that sorry either. 

"Nice place," Matteo says as he follows him inside. 

"Thanks." 

"You, uh," he glances up to see Matteo faltering, eager but nervous and failing to hide both, "you're really coming with us?" 

He remembers seeing Matteo's face briefly between clubs, mostly by virtue of his attention passing over him to find the next target. Remembers the startled awe and the distinct scent of relief that Baba Yaga was shooting for their side. "Sounds like it." 

Matteo nods once, wiping a grin away the moment it flickers onto his face, though John can't quite tell what the grin is for. "Where do you need me?" 

He sets Matteo to clearing the cupboards while he showers the night off, figuring he'll save himself trouble later if the clearing out has already started. But changing out of his clothes in the bathroom brings a surprise—the revolver from Viggo's living room, the single bullet still inside. After a moment's consideration, he sets it with his clothes and gets in the shower, though it still waits for him when he steps back out again. 

He doesn't own that many clothes, on account of frequent visits the Continental tailor between jobs, so the closet is cleared away and tucked into his suitcase along with coats and shoes, his suits packed into a garment bag. Upon Matteo informing him that they’re flying privately and passing weapons through the airport won't be a problem, he takes the whole heavy case out of his safe in the basement as-is for the comfort of carrying his own guns, seeing Matteo's eyes widen at the collection of guns and the stacks of coins inside. He considers for a moment, then adds the revolver too, though it looks strange and new among its brethren. 

After his camera goes into a carry-on bag, along with the books he's reasonably attached to and toiletries in the bathroom, the rest is simply a matter of making his life easier later. By the time Ares and Santino return with the rest of the bodyguards in the car, they've mostly resorted to cleaning out the thin possessions populating the cupboards and throwing away all the food. 

It's surprising, really. How it's possible to live in this house for several years and have so little in it that genuinely matters. Even so, he catches himself looking back at the house as they drive away, feeling as if he's shed a layer of skin and isn't used to the feeling of air against the newness of it all. 

He doesn't sleep on the plane, despite having nine hours to catch up on all the sleep he didn't get the night before. For all that the last several hours were spent killing and maiming in the company of Santino and his bodyguards, John still has the distinct sensation that none of this is quite real, not so much that it's a trick (if Santino wanted to kill him, he could have done it by now and with far less effort than flying to Rome) so much as the sense that if he falls asleep, he'll wake up in his own bed to find he dreamt it all. Boarding a plane to Rome, packing up his house at dawn, tearing through New York leaving more than the usual number of bodies in his wake, dinner, Viggo's penthouse. Santino meeting his eyes and leaning into the revolver John held to his forehead. 

John's not quite sure yet if he wants it to be real or not. Just that he keeps seeking Santino, his mind quiet and focused each time he finds him. So he doesn’t sleep, instead talking idly with Santino in Italian. Santino tells him about the spot of business handled in the morning while John was packing, what waits for them in Rome, answering John's questions about the actual terms of his employment. Apparently, he is to be a key member of Santino's security team, though not a bodyguard like Ares—an enforcer along similar lines to what he did for Viggo. 

It’s a good thing and John tells him as much—he's not a bodyguard by nature. As Viggo liked to tell him, being a bodyguard requires caring about your ward, and John’s brain usually malfunctions when it comes to caring about anything. That earns him an amused snort. 

"Most people would be inclined to interrogate me," Santino says, though he doesn't seem surprised that John is not similarly inclined. 

"I've gotten used to dealing with the unexpected." Specifically, dealing with the unexpected without showing its influence outwardly. 

"Even so," Santino replies, "this is rather more unexpected than usual." 

"I wasn't expecting to try to shoot you in the head last night either." 

Santino smiles. "You enjoyed that." 

It's not a question, and John doesn't answer. 

Santino's smile widens. "Are you thinking of murdering me?" 

John doesn't answer that question either. Instead, he leans back into his seat. "I'm taking things as they come. I enjoyed dinner, and I was thinking of a change in scenery anyway. I was expecting something more along the lines of changing my furniture than moving out of the country, but,” John shrugs, “this is more exciting." 

Santino laughs, his blue eyes sparkling as they did in the midst of the bloodshed, as they did when John pulled the trigger of the gun held to Santino's forehead. 

It still doesn't feel real when they finally land in Rome and disembark to waiting cars, not when he sets his possessions in the trunk and slips into the car after Santino and Ares, not when he looks out the window to find they're bypassing Rome and driving into the country. It's dark and very late an hour later when they finally pull through the gate and Santino's security team sighs in relief, waving to men stationed at checkpoints as they drive past and wind up the long drive. 

He steps out the car to find he’s exhausted, barely processing the house in front of him as he collects his heavy gun and coin case and his garment bag while two of the bodyguards grab his suitcases, though he does note that Santino stops them and turns them back to the front door when they start walking away from the house. 

“You’ll be in the main house with us,” Santino says quietly to John, who is just awake enough to process the guards nudging each other, though he doesn’t look at them. Instead, he follows Santino into the house, into a large entry hall and up a flight of stairs, turning right down a hallway and into a bedroom. 

“There are three other empty rooms on the other side of the house if you’d prefer,” Santino says as he turns on the light. 

“Where are you?” 

“Across the hall.” 

John nods once, setting his gun case next to the bed. “This is better for security anyway.” He doubts Santino is under much serious threat sleeping in his own fortress, but still. Better to minimize the distance between Santino and the most dangerous thing in the house. 

This seems to please Santino. “You’ll have more privacy this way. In one of the other rooms, you’d have to share the bathroom with Sameen and Ares and guests when guests stay here. This room has its own bathroom, though it is smaller.” 

He doubts guests stay here often, but still. Better not to have guests ogling Baba Yaga when he stumbles out of bed to brush his teeth. “This is perfect. Thank you.” 

“My pleasure.” Santino has the two bodyguards set down John’s suitcases and shoos them out when they stop to stare. He does linger in the doorway, though. John has a strange impulse to tell him to stay there, that he might drift loose of his moorings otherwise, but he clamps that thought down by virtue of tiredness. “I can have someone bring food up if you’d like. I imagine you’re not eager for more curious people at this hour.” 

He’s not, but he’s not hungry either. He just shakes his head. “I’m fine, thank you.” 

Santino nods once and steps out into the hall, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. John hears him speaking softly to the bodyguards in Italian. Shooing them away from bothering John, if the tone is any indication. He hears footsteps padding down the hall and back down the stairs, leaving him in silence once more. 

Left alone, his tiredness hits him in a wave. He sheds his shoes and digs through his suitcase long enough to locate a t-shirt and sleeping pants, situating his gun case within easy reach of his head so that someone coming through the door would have to walk all the way around the bed to get to it. That done, he sinks into the bed, finding it far softer than his own, and sinks into sleep before he realizes what's happening or has time to consider whether he ought to feel safe sleeping under this roof. 


	2. there's always music in the air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wakes up worlds away from home to find he didn't dream that night in Viggo's living room, or the eight hours that followed. That doesn't answer the question of what comes next. Or what he's doing here, in the specifics. But still, there are pleasant surprises to be had, and certain pleasures meant to be shared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me my maximalist heart its stage setting. I promise, you'll be glad I gave you this road map. And in this fic, it’s best to think of place as character, because place is very much character in the movies. In the meantime, mind the details. I promise everything is here for a reason.

John wakes up to the sun streaming through the windows to hit his face, thoroughly discombobulated by the angle—the glass wall in his bedroom is to the side of the bed, not in front, and also, this isn't his bed. It takes a solid minute to remember the last forty-eight hours, to realize that of course this isn't his own bed, because apparently, he didn't dream any of it. He did play a game with Santino D'Antonio in Viggo's living room and came out the other side employed by the king of the Camorra himself, and he's now in Santino's house, in the room Santino set aside for him.

He rolls out of bed experimentally, feeling a few bruises and scrapes as he does which further confirm the bloodbath that ushered in his employment with Santino wasn’t something he imagined. He walks to one of the windows and finds a courtyard below with a pomegranate tree arching over a metal table and chairs, the open glass doors to the rooms on the ground floor glittering in the morning sun. Two people step out and cross the courtyard in conversation—a stern grandmother accompanied by a blonde woman who looks like a maid. He retreats from the window to inspect the room.

In the daylight, the room—John's room—is relatively subdued, the color offered through soft blue walls and the rug under the bed. The bed faces the courtyard windows, a large leather trunk perched at its foot. There's a mantel at the far end of the room with an array of white vases like thin porcelain ghosts, above it a small painting of a goldfinch on a metal perch. To one side of the mantel are a wooden desk and an armchair, the other large mirror in a heavy bronze frame and a door that reveals a closet running the length of the wall behind the mantel. Near the hallway door is a wide mahogany bookshelf painted deep blue on the inside and sparsely decorated with more delicate white porcelain vases, a scattering of leather books, a few bronze busts, and an antique clock revealing it to be about eight in the morning. Closer inspection the door next to the bookcase reveals a small bathroom with another mirror in a heavy bronze frame, black and white tile, a shower with a green curtain.

It's a study in contrasts from John's house, all light grays and whites and glass, but it seems oddly fitting that this—whatever this is—should look worlds away from New York. He is worlds away from New York. In any case, he can feel Santino's touch in every detail of the room, which only makes sense in Santino's own house.

John putters a bit in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and shaving and contemplating the merits of venturing beyond his bubble to see what waits on the other side of the door and, perhaps more importantly, where the hell he should go, given that he has no sense of where anything is in the house or what's expected of him when he gets that far. After about ten minutes, though, his stomach makes it clear that it won't be ignored any longer since dinner was ignored in favor of sleep. He tucks his gun case out of sight and slowly opens the door, peering into the hall.

He finds a long, tastefully decorated hallway and has just long enough to ponder which direction to venture before he notices a man on a ladder fixing a security camera. The man smiles at him upon being noticed, and John murmurs, "Buon giorno," upon considering the odds of the man speaking English.

The man brightens. "Buon giorno." He starts to speak, then pauses and says, "You prefer English?"

Apparently, he does speak English. "Either."

The man nods, apparently satisfied, giving a small wave. "I'm Lorenzo. One of the security guys."

"John Wick."

"So, it is true." At John's raised eyebrow, he continues, "Matteo and the boys said the boss brought back Baba Yaga from New York to work for him. The rest of us said they were full of it."

John shrugs and gestures vaguely to himself, standing lost in Santino's hallway. "Guess not."

Lorenzo whistles. "Achille will have _kittens_ ," he says with delight. When John's stomach grumbles, he shakes himself. "Ah, sorry. You're probably wanting breakfast?"

"Yeah," John glances warily up and down the hall. "Where do I go? I didn't really see where anything was when we got in."

Lorenzo laughs. "It's a big place, but you get used to it. Turn left down the hall and turn left again to go down the stairs. Go straight instead of turning into the courtyard and just follow the sound of voices. You'll run straight into the kitchen in the corner of the house. Breakfast should be anytime now."

"Thanks."

He notes the open door to the bedroom across the hall, recalling Santino telling him the night before that his own bedroom was across the hall. He briefly considers glancing in but decides against it. After all, one of Santino's security staff is fixing a camera in the hall behind him, and he probably hasn't earned the right to go poking around anything without permission, least of all Santino's bedroom. So instead, he follows Lorenzo's instructions, turning left down the hall to pad down the staircase.

Sure enough, noise and chatter greet him as he reaches the ground floor, and he follows the sound straight down the hall to find a kitchen in the front corner of the house, bathed in sunlight and bustling with activity. The stern grandmother he saw in the courtyard is arguing in rapid-fire Italian with a woman in a gray chef's coat and a tight French braid holding domain over the restaurant-sized island in the middle of the room, the maid lifting a brass pan from the array on one wall and holding it out as if offering a bone to a snappish dog, which the woman in the chef's coat snatches from her without pause. The grandmother waves the maid away to continue arguing, and she gratefully vanishes down a set of stairs in the corner. There's a large gray stone hearth in one wall with counters and cupboards on either side, the sun shining in from windows on the other side of the kitchen looking out over the property. At one end of the kitchen is a breakfast nook set into a bay of three windows with a circular table big enough for six people, which is where John sees Santino talking to Ares and a pretty olive-skinned woman with big dark eyes over coffee and an unopened newspaper, all three still dressed like they just got out of bed, which makes John feel marginally less out of place.

Ares and the woman next to her glance up at John's arrival, and Santino breaks from their conversation to look that way and smile upon finding John in the doorway.

"Good morning, Mr. Wick," Santino says, looking thoroughly delighted to be able to say that sentence.

"Morning."

"Coffee machine is on the counter over there," Santino says, pointing. "Breakfast will be done in," he glances at the cook, who holds up both hands with her fingers splayed without pausing her argument, "ten minutes or so."

"Thanks." Turns out, though, that the coffee machine is some elaborate contraption just as far away from his own drip coffee pot as his room is from his house in New York.

"Here." He looks up to find Santino crossing the room and pulling a white mug from the cupboard. "How do you like your coffee?"

"Plain black is fine." Santino nods and presses a few buttons, holding out a full mug of coffee a moment later. "Thanks."

Santino just smiles and turns back to the table. "Come. Sit." John follows and drops into the seat offered to him next to Santino. "You remember Ares. And that's Sameen." Sameen waves and says something in Ares's ear which earns snickering. John settles into drinking his coffee and listening to Santino's melodic Italian as he resumes his conversation with them under the steady beat of the cook and the grandmother arguing.

"Holy shit." John looks up to see three men entering the kitchen staring his way, Matteo and two brick walls of muscle he can only assume are also part of the security staff.

"Didn't I say?" Matteo tells them proudly like he didn't spend eight hours afraid John would murder him.

"Sure, we just didn't believe you," one brick wall replies.

"Told you," Sameen mutters, rolling her eyes. "Ares doesn't make shit up."

"Good morning, Giacomo, Athos," Santino hums at them, his mouth twitching in amusement. "Glad to hear you had time to gossip."

"Achille will have _kittens_ ," Matteo says in delight.

"That's Baba Yaga?" The other brick wall—Athos, maybe—asks with a disbelieving look.

"He has a name, Athos. John Wick," Santino replies, then calls, "In here, Bedelia," in response to a woman's voice in the hall.

In strides a woman, Bedelia apparently, with perfectly coifed blonde hair and a red blouse, stepping around the three men in the door like she's quite used to them being in her way. "We're getting four paintings back from the Victoria and Albert at noon and a curator from Baltimore wants to get on the phone with you at two about borrowing a few Matisses and Diebenkorns for an exhibition in June."

"I'll be free."

"Did you get the Murakami paintings?"

The product of Santino and Ares's business yesterday morning. "Already waiting for you downstairs. Along with a lovely little Renoir."

"Good. I’ve got a curator in Berlin that will drool for them." Bedelia pauses long enough to pour coffee and glance in John's direction. "Who is this?"

"New hire from New York. John Wick."

"Viggo Tarasov's John Wick?" John was under the impression this woman was a curator until that sentence. Then again, she seems to be Santino's curator.

"Not Viggo's anymore," John says, earning a snort from Sameen and a wave of Santino's quiet pleasure for his trouble.

Bedelia looks him up and down. Then she steps to the side and points to a small painting on the wall of the kitchen near the edge of the breakfast nook, well away from the blast radius of the real kitchen work. "Do you know what that is?"

He glances at it. It's a small painting and a rather nice piece, upon closer inspection. "Manet. _A Bunch of Asparagus_."

"And the one above it?"

A glance at the small painting above it, an equally nice piece showing a single asparagus spear. "Also Manet. _L'asperge_."

Bedelia nods. If he had to guess, that's the closest she'll get to admitting to being impressed that a contract killer recognized a Manet. "Manet sold _A Bunch of Asparagus_ to Charles Ephrussi for eight hundred francs. And when Ephrussi paid him a thousand francs, Manet painted _L'asperge_ and sent it to him with a note saying, 'There was one missing from your bunch'." The eyes that settle on him are cool and calculating, her voice measured. "Do you know why I'm telling you this?"

John meets her eye, drinks his coffee, and waits.

"Because this house has a collection of invaluable art that museums around the world would massacre for in much less idiotic places than a kitchen where food is made on a daily basis. And if you take cues from this hellion," her cool gaze shifts to Ares, who sticks out her tongue, before settling back on John like the first winter chill, "and get blood on it, you'll be missing more than a spear from your bunch. Am I understood?"

John nods.

Bedelia's gaze doesn't shift from him, though. She's still looking him up and down with a gaze he imagines she would use to appraise a painting for authenticity or ream the painter's lack of skill. Then she says to Santino in Italian, "You have good taste."

Ares snorts into her coffee.

"He speaks Italian," Santino replies in Italian. "Fluently."

"Better still," she replies in English. "Is Delphine working yet?"

"Already downstairs."

"Good." Bedelia turns with her coffee in hand and glides across the kitchen to the stairs, her heels clicking as she vanishes down the steps.

"I think she likes you," Santino informs him, his voice warm with amusement.

"You protect him?" This from the stern grandmother in thickly accented English. When John blinks at her, she studies him like she means to string him from a meat hook. "You protect him?" she repeats, pointing to Santino.

"Among other things," Santino replies.

She gives him an unimpressed look. "He’s good at his job? And other things?"

"Very." It's unclear which part Santino is referring to. Or what other things refers to, exactly. John decides to drink his coffee and not question it too hard.

The grandmother raises an eyebrow, then marches down the island to drag Giacomo and Athos by the front of their shirts as though they couldn't break her in half. "Show me," she says to John, shoving them forward at John as she steps back to her post in front of the chef, who pauses checking breakfast with the promise of free entertainment. "Don't break my kitchen."

John sets down his coffee, seeing guns under Giacomo and Athos's jackets as he does, scanning the counter briefly as they step apart. The mug touches the table and his hand closes around the newspaper. He looks at Athos without blinking, Athos going still as a hunted animal under his gaze.

The newspaper flies at Giacomo's face and he shoots forward out of the chair to throw an elbow in Athos's face with an ugly crack, shoving him sideways into the wall. Giacomo recovers from the paper with enough time for John to kick his knee out, grabbing a thick wooden spoon from the counter to slam the base of the handle into the back of Giacomo's head. He sees movement in his periphery and slides sideways so that Athos’s punch overbalances his body weight to send him crashing into the counter while John twists his other arm behind his back to a shout of pain. John reaches under his jacket to grab the gun from Athos’s hip, put the safety on, and whirl with his grip still on Athos’s arm to whip the butt of the gun into Giacomo’s face as he stands so that he reels back into the cabinets. He disables Athos’s gun one-handed and lets the magazine clatter on the floor, throwing the gun across the room so he has a hand free to bash Athos’s face into the counter, letting him drop like a lead weight at John’s feet while John grabs a knife out of the block. He catches Giacomo trying to come toward him and slams his stomach into the island before forcing him to his knees with a knife to his jugular.

Giacomo freezes. John holds Giacomo still with the knife and a knee to his back, reaches into his jacket, drops the magazine out of the gun and throws the body of the gun across the room to clatter into a large basket of firewood on the floor.

Then there's a chef's knife pointed at John’s throat.

He looks up to find the cook meeting his eyes without care for Giacomo still trying not to have the knife at his neck draw blood. “Don’t use my knives if you don’t want to get gutted.”

He slowly sets the knife back in the knife block, his knee still trapping Giacomo. Then his hand shoots to grab hold of her wrist and yank her forward, snatching the knife with his right hand to press the sharp edge to her neck while his left hand turns her arm over to trap her against the knife and avoid dislocating her shoulder.

A beat. Giacomo fidgets and is rewarded with a knee kicking him back against the counter.

“Don’t startle me with knives if you don’t want to get gutted,” he says, hearing Santino’s laughter behind him.

“I’ll be sure not to startle you then,” the cook retorts.

John decides he likes her. He lets go of her arm and sets down the knife, stepping back from Giacomo.

"Keep him," the cook orders Santino, picking up the knife again.

“ _Kittens_ ,” Matteo mutters weakly.

The grandmother takes John by the shoulders and steers him back to his seat next to Santino as if he hasn't just taken out two men in two minutes. "Sit and eat. You need energy after a long trip," she tells him in Italian, then says to Santino, "Scruffy, but he has kind eyes. You have good taste."

"Lui parla italiano," Santino replies evenly over the sound of Sameen and Ares snickering. John wonders if he needs to refresh his Italian.

"Mischa will feed you well," she says to John in Italian, patting his shoulder before turning around to scold Athos and Giacomo on her way back to the hall. "Up, both of you. You'll make a mess of my clean floor."

“ _Kittens_ ,” Giacomo crows with delight to Athos and Matteo.

"Nicely done, Mr. Wick," Santino says to him quietly as Athos and Giacomo right themselves.

"I'm apparently living under your roof and you watched me kill thirty people for you within three hours of hiring me," John replies, picking up his coffee mug. "We've reached the point where you can call me by my first name."

Santino smiles and loops him into his conversation with Ares and Sameen as though he can't see Sameen smirking into her coffee.

Santino gives him the day to get settled and wander the house, saying that someone from Accounts Receivable will stop by in the afternoon so that John can complete his paperwork. In the meantime, Santino has minor business to attend but will be free later in the afternoon and John should feel free to use his time as he likes and help himself to anything in the house. Sameen and Ares trail behind him when they go upstairs to change for the day, Sameen sketching a rough map on a sheet of paper and explaining the lay of the land while Ares orders him to produce his cell phone so she can type in the phone numbers of everyone in the house, Santino included.

“We’ll be in the garage most of the morning working on our bikes with Anthony,” Sameen says, tapping her pen on the relevant building in her sketch of the grounds. “Stop by if you want company. Just go out the front door, turn left, and follow the road branching away from the house, the garage is set back a bit behind the orchard. No harm no foul if you want to soak in on your own time. The guys will be itching to have you kick their asses at some point soon, though, fair warning.”

“Thanks.”

“The hell are you thanking me for? That was the best breakfast theatre we’ve had since that time with the Egyptians.”

“What was that time with the Egyptians?”

“Stop by the garage and I’ll tell you,” Sameen grins. “Or remind me over food. It’s a story that needs stage setting.”

“Noted.” Ares hands him back his phone with a flourish and waves as she and Sameen duck out.

“Glad to have you kill people and break stuff with us!” Sameen calls from the hallway.

He changes clothes wondering how many people will die and how much stuff will be broken in the duration of his newfound employment. Then he takes Sameen's crudely drawn map and begins a slow loop around the house, starting on the top floor. He hears Santino moving in the master suite and turns in the other direction toward the back of the house. He finds a long hallway with two tapestries framing the windows to the courtyard with the triumph of Rome and the death of Polydorous respectively under a ceiling with a fresco of scenes from the Book of Numbers, facing open archways to a mezzanine overlooking what appears to be a large ballroom with a large sculpture set into the far wall. A glance through a door leading to the corner room reveals a richly adorned sitting room, mirroring the one in the other back corner of the house on the other side of the ballroom.

Further walking reveals an empty room laid out like his own, apparently occupied by Santino's sister if the blue and silver feminine styling and designer perfume are any indications. It also reveals Ares' and Sameen's room, one of the two bedrooms on the outer edge of the house, and while that too is decorated with equal levels of money and taste, it also shows comforting signs of normality—two pairs of motorcycle boots by the foot of the bed, riding jackets hanging on the closet door, a facedown copy of Stephen King’s _Misery_ next to what appears to be a gay bodice-ripper novel, Ares's knives on the desk next to a disassembled Sig-Sauer P320 spread out on a cleaning cloth, framed selfies of Ares and Sameen in Okinawa, Marrakech, the Amalfi Coast.

"Thinking of moving in?" Sameen asks, emerging from the bathroom down the hall in oil-stained jeans and a Johnny Cash t-shirt.

"Already claimed the room across from Santino," he replies, stepping back out of their doorway.

"Good choice. Ares takes _forever_ to do her hair in the morning," Sameen says, grinning as Ares blows a raspberry from inside the bathroom.

Walking toward bathroom leads to the discovery of an empty guest room next to Ares and Sameen’s room and two more empty guest rooms at the front of the house, all three of them classicist jewel boxes curated to intimidate and impress. John examines each from the doorway and is relieved each time that Santino didn’t put him in one of them—each is beautiful, but none of them are places where someone is meant to get comfortable for an extended period.

Santino's study lies in the front corner, dressed in dark wood and walls of books broken up by windows, though John only pauses there briefly since Santino slips in through a door from the master bedroom and settles into his desk not long after John appears in the doorway. Instead, he loops downstairs, starting with the kitchen in the front right corner since he knows where it is, discovering the dining room attached to it and two galleries in the back corners on either side of the ballroom. On the other side of the house is a living room richly adorned in deep red damask and Italian antiques, and in the front corner a library full to the brim with books under a frescoed ceiling, all three rooms on that side connected to a loggia looking into the garden. The house is centered around the small courtyard with the pomegranate tree, with two parlors paneled in walnut and deep blue velvet furniture bookending the courtyard on either side, the glass doors left open and the cream-colored curtains fluttering in the morning breeze.

The house is a study in eclectic contrasts that shouldn't make sense but somehow balance each other. It starts in the entry hall, which on one hand has an intricate blue and white mosaic floor spreading in a wide circle from the front door to the courtyard and on the other hand has a glass-top table with a swirl of metal legs perched at the center of the mosaic, topped with a small marble statue of Minerva in battle armor while two large blue and white Ming vases frame the glass doors to the courtyard with a spray of lilacs. The dining room has walls done in old painted terracotta tiles but has a painting by Koloman Moser, _Dance_ , situated over a samurai sword. One of the two parlors bookending the courtyard has a Diebenkorn painting, _Albuquerque #3_ , over the mantle, while the other has Van Gogh's _Wheat Field with Cypresses_ , the paintings in both parlors each framed by two busts of Frederick Hart's _The Muses_ and sharing space with a collection of Japanese ink paintings. The long gallery that makes the hallway running along the back of the house is a swirl of delicate frescos depicting the Book of Job, punctuated by Roman and Greek marble sculptures and white vases and urns from a handful of Chinese dynasties soaked in light from the courtyard on one side and the glass doors opening to the ballroom on the other. Out of all of it, Santino seems to have three constant preferences: Klimt, Frederick Hart, whose ghostly acrylic sculptures are scattered throughout the house, and a British potter called Edmund de Waal whose delicate white porcelain pieces are also scattered throughout the house, including the thin white vases in John's room.

Yet every room seems to have its own private jokes. Like the Manets in the kitchen. Or Klimt's _Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung_ , which has pride of place over Sameen and Ares's bed, because apparently they have the type of relationship where Santino can make that joke and Sameen and Ares find it hilarious. Or Tintoretti's _The Penitent Magdalen_ , which hangs in Santino’s study over his grandfather's collection of antique Bibles, hymnals and psalters, staring out the side window directly across the garden at the ivy-covered chapel which is apparently no longer a chapel but apartments for the women household staff to have some goddamn peace and quiet, at least according to Sameen's scrawl. Then again, humor seems to be a family trait--the fresco on the library ceiling depicts Ecclesiastes, though it’s unclear whether placing the fresco in a room overflowing with books was meant as a snub to the author’s admonition that life has no meaning or a reminder of the author’s admonition that in this life it’s best to simply enjoy God’s gifts.

From the outside, the house is made of aged blue-gray stone surrounded by a sprawling piece of land, the winding drive lined with cypresses and pear trees hiding cameras and punctuated by checkpoints. To one side of the house is a carefully manicured garden, the other an orchard of various fruit trees running alongside an offshoot of the main drive that leads to a cluster of four outbuildings around what looks to be a former stable now stabling an array of metal horsepower instead of horses. Behind the house, the orchard and the garden meld with a wide lawn backing up to a stone walkway covered in wisteria and a stone terrace backing directly up to a cliff face, looking out over the Tyrrhenian Sea.

He walks in slow circles feeling disoriented and out of place. New York was new and sharp and metallic, aggressive in its modernity and the speed of life. This place has been updated to stay in good condition and keep up with modern amenities, and Santino’s influence on its veneer is evident, but it also has an aura of unwavering patience that comes with a property inherited for countless generations, steady in the knowledge that one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh but the earth abideth for ever, and the earth shall reclaim this place when there are no more generations of D’Antonios left.

He meets various people around the house as he wanders. There's the maid dusting the living room, Yvette, who pauses singing along to a Frank Sinatra record to titter in excited Italian when John shakes her hand before the housekeeper, Doria, scolds her to get busy. Which does not stop Doria herself from peppering him with questions about New York and how he came to be here with Santino. The fact that Santino stealing him in Viggo's living room via Russian roulette was immediately followed by an eight-hour bloodbath that Doria knows about does not at all dim her apparent delight at John being here, which just goes to show that Doria is Santino's housekeeper for a reason.

There's Bedelia's assistant, a first-year art history Ph.D. student called Delphine working in a restoration space full to the brim with priceless art which takes up about half of the basement. She worships the ground Bedelia walks on. She is also impressively unfazed by the fact that she works for a mob king, or the fact that the maze of stairs and passages hidden in the walls that she and Bedelia use to move art around the property were not originally put there to make a restorer’s life easier, or the fact that those hidden passages connecting most rooms in the house are all lined with weapons, or that only one of the basement exits is visible from the outside. According to Delphine, it's infinitely more fun than working in a museum and with a more diverse collection to boot. The fact that she occasionally cleans more than dust off the art just improves upon her talents as a restorer. 

There’s the mechanic and driver, Anthony, who happily talks his ear off about the 1926 3 1/2 Litre Bentley he’s working on in the garage until Sameen and Ares drag him away to show off their babies, a pair of gleaming black Ducati 996s. The gardener, Francesco, wanders in from working on a fig tree in the orchard and crows upon seeing John, leaning out the door to shout for the security boys in the neighboring outbuildings to stop sitting on their asses and come say hello. Which is how John meets the rest of the security team, thirty men between the ages of nineteen and forty who are enlisted to help in various tasks when they’re not looping the grounds, taking their turn watching the security feeds, or tending to business with Santino, all of which is relatively quiet today.

Achille does have kittens, figuratively speaking. Apparently, he met Baba Yaga before. Or rather, he happened to be in the same place where Viggo sent Baba Yaga to massacre. He was fortunate enough to keep his view from the cheap seats without attracting John’s attention since John was there to instill the fear of God in the Triad. Apparently, he’s been beside himself with terror and glee since the boss decided he wanted to acquire John Wick, which sounds like it was longer ago than John thought it was.

"It's lucky you didn't meet him last night," one of the others, Valentine, informs him. "He pissed himself he was so excited."

"It's _John Wick_ ," Achille says. Which isn't a denial about pissing himself.

They are all itching to have John kick their asses, but at Bedelia's insistence, they take it to the back lawn instead of the basement in the interest of not getting in the way of paintings being unloaded through the basement entryway to the orchard. It's a relief, really, to have all of them shed their weapons and eagerly get thrown into each other, into the dirt, Ares and Sameen cackling as they take swings and get as good as they give, Delphine and Yvette cheering in the background while John lets loose the tension of not quite knowing what he's doing here, the strangeness of this new place that still feels like an elaborate dream. He doesn't pause until he hears a man's laughter, looking up to find Santino and Doria watching from the patio behind the ballroom, Santino's blue eyes bright as the midday sky.

He's promptly kicked in the head by Ares, who laughs as he throws her into Sergio and Constantine like a bowling ball at pins.

"Enough! Enough!" Doria calls. "You'll break Mr. Wick."

"Break him?" Achille calls, gulping down air from where he's crawled against a stone bench to watch the fun. "Pretty sure he'll break us."

"Speak for yourself!" Sameen shouts, leaping on John's back like a spider monkey to try to strangle him from behind while Yvette whistles. It doesn't work—she's thrown off within two seconds of landing on him—but she seems to have fun getting thrown and still more fun sweeping his legs out from under him.

They're covered in grass stains and sweat when Santino finally calls a stop to it, eating lunch perched in the courtyard in a wall of chatter and Sameen recounting that time with the Egyptians. It's nothing at all like it was amongst the bratva, where he was always doing things on his own, only surrounded by people when Viggo or Abram called on him for larger jobs requiring more guns and trigger fingers than John could carry on his person.

After lunch, Santino calls him in from the garden to the living room. John finds his employment contract waiting for him, along with a representative of Accounts Receivable, her tattoo sleeves peeking out from under her suit jacket sleeves. “For your perusal,” Santino says. “Take your time and sign if it’s all agreeable to you.”

He reviews the contract, spelling out the terms of the Marker agreement made in Viggo's living room and the subsequent terms of his employment with Santino as they discussed on the plane. He signs and watches the Accounts Receivable representative stamp it, nodding in thanks as she produces a freshly minted Italian passport and a sizeable stack of coins for those eight hours in New York with the sense that it ought to feel more significant than paper and hammered metal.

“How are you finding the place?” Santino asks as he closes the door behind the woman as she leaves.

John looks out at the garden, tracing the manicured boxwoods and oleander, breathing in the air mingled with the smell of old books and climbing roses. "I'm adjusting."

"It's all rather sudden. I'm sorry for that."

He looks away from the garden to find Santino studying him, wondering what he sees. "No, you're not."

"No, I'm not." Santino smiles. Of all the things in this room, the Italian antiques, the Vermeer still life of an opened pomegranate and oranges, the distant sound of Yvette singing a French pop song and Athos and Roberto bickering over football odds while trimming the hedges, Santino seems to be the one thing anchoring it all together. "Are you?"

All that's in John's head is a steady hum, the feeling of settling into a job he knows he can do well. Except he's not on a job. He's not even quite sure what he's doing here, given that Santino went out of his way to collect him. And yet. "No."

"That's all I can hope for." Santino gathers the coins and the passport and offers them to John. "Go get cleaned up."

He does, leaving the passport and coins on the desk in his room for lack of a better idea of what to do with them. He pulls on clean clothes readjusting to the sounds of the house and is surprised to hear piano music, which continues as he steps out into the hall. He follows his ears down the stairs and to the gallery behind the living room to find Santino seated at the Steinway, his fingers lightly dancing across the keys.

Santino makes the piano sing something enchanting like it's as easy as breathing, and he seems entirely at home there, as if dancing with an old friend. And it's probably creepy, standing in the door watching Santino play piano, but John can't muster the will to move. He leans against the doorframe, but he must make a sound when he settles, because the music cuts short and Santino looks to the door.

"Sorry," John says, faltering under Santino's gaze and taking a half-step back.

Santino shakes his head and nods to a chair near the piano, his hands resuming their progress. "Don't be. Music is meant to be heard."

After a second's hesitation, John pads forward and settles in the chair. The music washes over him like water, settling something that's been itching in him since he got here, his feet rooted down in the pull of gravity again. He feels himself drift slightly, looking up to find Santino watching him.

"Lovely, isn't it?"

"It's beautiful."

"It’s Brahms. One of the pieces he wrote for Clara Schumann, so she could play with her arthritic hands."

"I didn't know you played."

Santino hums in his chest, looking down at the keys. "I studied music for a while in school."

"I thought you studied at the London School of Economics." It's unclear why that tidbit of the mythos of Santino D'Antonio is in regular circulation. Possibly because mob bosses are generally in the habit of shooting the kneecaps out from under an economy. Probably because the hedge fund founded by Santino's grandfather as a legitimate front lies at the heart of Santino's stranglehold on the Camorra and the High Table.

"Econometrics and abstract mathematics. Music was for the joy of it." Santino tilts his head, still looking down. "It takes a mathematician's mind to understand the wonderful absurdity of humanity and a certain flavor of creativity hear numbers singing. In any case, I find all three quite informative in my line of work." His eyes flick back up to John, his mouth curling in amusement. "Bedelia was impressed you recognized the Manets."

A diplomatic choice of words. People tend to be surprised John knows how to do anything other than inflicting harm. "I usually have time to kill between the end of a contract and a flight. Museums are as good a place to be as any."

That earns him a light laugh, the music dancing around it. "You're a man full of surprises."

John shrugs. "It's more work for someone to kill me in a place already crawling with security, and you can only spend so much time hiding in Continentals."

He gets a proper laugh for that, though the music continues, warping ever so slightly to wrap around the sound of Santino's voice. "Where did you see them first?"

"A museum in Dublin. I can only assume they were on loan from you."

"When was that?"

"Seven years ago."

Santino shakes his head. "I got them four years ago, and Bedelia's still annoyed they're in the kitchen," Santino rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "But given the subject matter, it seemed absurd to put them anywhere else."

"Most museums would shuttle them between a display and a vault."

Santino reaches the end of the piece and closes his eyes briefly through the conclusion, letting the silence rush in for a breath before he speaks again. "Life is too short to keep worthwhile things hidden away," he says "and worthwhile things are a pleasure meant to be shared before you run out of days.”

John inclines his head to the piano. "Like music?"

Santino smiles, setting his hands back to the keys to start a different piece. "Precisely."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, you thought "certain pleasures meant to be shared" meant something different? 
> 
> I realize John recognized and named quite a lot of art in this chapter, which would imply he's rather well-versed in art. For some reason, a lot of fics present him as not knowing or caring about art. Fight me, I have canonical evidence that John Wick is in fact a fan of art. You'll get it in a few chapters, promise. Along with the reasons behind some of the implications already made here and backstory introduced. We've got 23 chapters. Patience is a virtue.


	3. made my home with foxes and crows in the place where nobody goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John becomes accustomed, slowly and with the recalcitrance of a freshly adopted street cat, to the many people that make up the D'Antonio household—the four women who keep Santino's life in order around him, the two women who help run his business, and the rest of the colorful cast whose sole uniting quality seems to be Santino's entertainment. John thought he would be ill at ease around Santino, given that they met over a one-on-one round of Russian roulette, but he's actually more at ease around Santino than he is around anyone else. Apparently, this confuses and kind of disturbs the rest of the household. 
> 
> He's still not clear what he's doing here, exactly, but there are small pleasures to be had. Like good bourbon and piano music in the night. Or Santino's quiet pleasure when he looks up to find John watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where you start to get more characterization of Santino and proxy characterization of John. Because we only get a bare-bones sketch of Santino in canon, and because we only meet him when he's desperate and out of options, I'm assuming he would be different when he's in the height of his power. He's drawn primarily from Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter (i.e. a complete psychopath and also the literal Devil himself) and from this fascinating interview from the Cut with a woman discussing what it's like to live as a diagnosed psychopath: https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/my-life-as-a-psychopath.html. 
> 
> Side note: break out your fandom bingo cards, cause there's a whole damn library. Not sure what you get if you catch all the references. My appreciation for your diligence and shared fandoms, I suppose.

It takes John a week to commit to unpacking. Ares and Matteo settle on his bed to comment on bits and pieces of his taste in reading material while he does— _The Stranger, The Emigrants, Flaubert’s Parrot_ —as he arranges his books on the shelf amidst the leather books that already live there. His camera and lenses take up residence around the clock while Sameen offers running commentary on his taste in guns and picks up various coins asking about the job that earned each one as though the coins aren’t identical.

He unpacks his guns alone, hiding them in various places around the room with quiet relief at the discovery that there are quite a lot of places to hide guns. The more robust ones he decides out of sight in the closet, keeping the coins in the case with them. He almost forgets the revolver until he picks up the case to put in the closet.

It still looks out of place in the case. John picks it up and clicks the magazine free. The one bullet is still in the magazine where he left it, cool in his fingers and glinting in the sunlight. He puts the bullet back in the magazine and the magazine back in the revolver, but upon a moment’s consideration, he doesn’t put the revolver back in the case. Instead, he tucks it in the desk drawer alongside his passport, telling himself he’ll acquire bullets later to fill out the magazine.

It takes another two weeks to stop feeling like he’ll wake up one morning to find he imagined everything, time he spends trying to find his rhythm among the people who keep the D'Antonio business alive, catching onto the workings of the many relationships at play, particularly among the women in charge—the four women who keep Santino's life in order around him and the two women who help him run the two halves of his core business.

There's Doria, Santino's unflappable Italian grandmother of a housekeeper hired by his grandfather as a thirteen-year-old girl, the only person who can get away with terrorizing him as much as she terrorizes the people who work for him. There's Bedelia, the curator with a whirl of blonde hair and a soft voice lined with steel responsible for keeping Santino's art and antiques in good condition while coordinating the endless flow of art in and out of the house, a responsibility she takes with a fierceness a mother would afford a beloved only child. There's Mischa, Santino's menace of a Lithuanian cook plucked straight from the Cordon Bleu who spends weekends gifting her talents to the upper echelons of Rome through her restaurant kitchen. There's Ares, Santino's head of security, who is about half the size of most of the men she employs and routinely uses all of them to mop the floor alongside Sameen, Ares’s girlfriend and Santino’s other primary bodyguard who takes a concerning amount of glee in throwing herself directly in the middle of a fistfight.

There's Dr. Caroline Turing, an American computer scientist and old friend of Santino's from LSE who helps him move, clean, and grow ungodly amounts of money for various branches of the Twelve Families and the High Table as his partner in the hedge fund. She’s a suitable partner if ever there was, because she was just as delighted as he was to discover a partner equally brilliant in the artistry of numbers and equally unbothered by boring things like legality and morals. There’s Flora Rosalia, Santino’s maternal cousin who’s more like his sister than his actual sister (John thought she actually _was_ his sister at first, thanks to her habit of referring to Santino as her brother, until he remembered Santino’s actual sister is quite a bit younger). She inherited Santino’s mother’s esteemed design firm, the front for Santino’s mother’s still more esteemed smuggling and fencing business. Flora herself specializes in guns and drugs and is a major supplier of both to the network of Continentals for the High Table. John wasn’t sure what he expected of Flora, given that she has a reputation for being completely terrifying and has a rumored triple-digit body count, but it didn’t include 5’5”-by-virtue-of-heels Flora striding into a warehouse of gunrunners, picking up an assault rifle bigger than she is, and checking it like a vet checking a horse’s teeth.

All six of them drive each other up the damn walls.

It matters little Doria than Mischa is an artist of astonishing talent responsible for feeding the man she raised about as little as it matters to Mischa that Doria is the one responsible for making sure she has supplies with which to craft her art—they fight like cats and dogs at least once per week over the finer points of running a kitchen. Similarly, Bedelia threatens to gut Ares with her own knives for bloodshed in the midst of priceless art roughly as often as she calmly and quietly informs Yvette that if she looks in the direction of a Titian with cleaning supplies in her hands again her hands will no longer remain attached. To which Mischa invariably replies that she's going to serve Bedelia as evening roast if she uses the kitchen knives and to use the actual killers in the house for that purpose before returning to arguing with Doria, returning Ares's raised middle finger without missing a beat. Ares routinely argues with Caroline over the state of the security system, which Caroline built herself and is extremely possessive over. Caroline also makes a nuisance of herself with Mischa for the fun of it—apparently, she was a foster kid from Texas who dragged herself to LSE on account of genius, ruthlessness, and possibly a few hacked servers, which means that while Santino has trained her to run in blue-blood circles, her natural palette is enough to give Mischa fits.

Flora’s just a shit stirrer. For example, she gets along with Bedelia like a house on fire, because apparently the current design of the property is her handiwork and Flora loves beautiful things just as much as Santino and Bedelia. On the other hand, the arsenals hidden in the walls are also Flora’s handiwork, which means she gets along with Ares and Sameen like a wooden house on fire. Theoretically, she could keep the peace between warring nations. Most of the time she pokes bricks out of the wall to see what will happen.

Still, Doria keeps a stock of Batard-Montrachet for Bedelia, who returns the favor by bringing pastries in from Rome proper that Doria loves. Bedelia and Flora frequently sit in the kitchen debating the merits of various dishes with Mischa, who appreciates other people with good taste in fine things. Mischa drinks up Ares's international escapades with glee in order to get ideas for food, and Ares makes a point of seeking out good local food for that reason—and bringing back various prizes ranging from French truffles of extremely questionable legality to a handful of local candy from the bargain bin of every international airport she sets foot in. Ares also keeps supplies on hand for Doria's joints and smacks the security team for being careless of Delphine and thankless of Yvette. Doria scolds Yvette and the security staff alike for forgetting to look at Ares when holding a conversation at least as much as she scolds the grandmothers in Sunday Mass about how Ares and Sameen are lovely young women despite tearing through town on their bikes like the hounds of hell. Doria also functionally raised Flora and Santino as twins since the age of four, which means Flora treats her like a beloved grandmother and Doria is not at all fazed by any of Flora’s constant escapades, up to and including a box of hand grenades casually sitting in her bag during lunch. And while Caroline is dizzyingly brilliant with machines, she seems to think of the human population other than Santino and Flora as bad code, which in practical terms means that Ares and Sameen egg her on with creative ways to murder financiers and give her endless shit about her love life (an on-again-off-again mess with a blonde High Table mole in Interpol named Olivia Dunham punctuated by flings with men which confirm Caroline’s belief that men need to be canceled as a species). As for Caroline and Flora, they and Santino have been attached at the hip since they were all eighteen, which means they would kill other people together as readily as they would send each other presents (which is to say at least once every two weeks).

And all six of them are united in their loyalty, fondness, and chronic exasperation for Santino.

Plus, keeping them on hand regularly provides free dinner theatre on the off chance the house happens to get boring. There's popcorn in the pantry for when Bedelia returns to find a dinner reservation crew working on her priceless art after a business meeting gets colorful, a jar of euros and coins alongside it which is the betting pool for Santino’s response to when Doria reminds him every other week that this house was built for a family, a bag of M&Ms sandwiched between them for when Doria and Mischa work up to a proper row in the face of a dinner party, and a stack of Post-It notes and pens so someone can tally how many shots they have to take after the dinner party ends (half a shot for the number of times Caroline wants to break a tumbler over someone’s head, a whole shot when she smiles sweetly at a finance asshole before tearing him limb from limb with advanced algorithmic trading and stock predictions, and everyone finishing their drink when Flora reminds the tougher-than-thou camorristi boys that the only reason they have big guns to feel like big men is because her little design shop smuggles all their shipments through customs). 

John also becomes accustomed, slowly and with the recalcitrance of a freshly adopted street cat, to all the other people in the house. There are many of them, and all of them have their own dramas, and the only consistent theme seems to be Santino’s entertainment.

Like Delphine's girlfriend, Cosima, an evolutionary developmental biology Ph.D. student who lives in one of the chapel apartments on the grounds with Delphine (there's no way Santino could have planned that, but there’s also no way he doesn’t think it’s hilarious). She appears at all odd hours of day or night to hunt for good snacks in the kitchen before crossing the house to spread out her textbooks on the floor of the living room while Delphine puts on a record and Yvette curls up on the couch to continue her progress through the endless collection of books in the house. It's unclear where Yvette surfaces half of the books from, given that the only consistent trait is macabre and her tastes run from the Graveyard Poets to _The Sinister House of Secret Love_.

Like Yvette, whose talent for making Gothic pulp appear out of thin air is the least confusing thing about her. The most confusing thing about her is that, despite her strong French accent, no one can agree on where in France Yvette is from. Santino stole her from DC after acquiring the business of her former boss, a madam trafficking in government information, so that he could employ Yvette's finer talents in secret-gathering on guests with wandering eyes. Delphine’s theory is that the madam acquired her from an international spy ring run by Le Milieu, since Yvette is rather like the people her father used to work with in various Le Milieu rings. Ares's theory is that Yvette is French by way of Vegas, since even Delphine (who grew up in Lille) can't figure out where Yvette’s from (a theory supported by the fact that Yvette herself doesn't seem to know where Yvette’s from).

Like Sameen, who apparently went to medical school before being recruited by Army Intelligence Support, which means she's typically responsible for patching anyone who gets hurt. This invariably results in grumbling about the sanctity of the Hippocratic oath and Sameen's glib reply that it's their own damn fault for thinking someone with an Axis II Personality Disorder is fit to be a doctor. Personally, John is relieved by that one, since Sameen knows how to give him painkillers that actually work the way they’re supposed to (there’s apparently a specially-formulated stock of painkillers on hand for Santino and Sameen based on Sameen’s specifications, and a third batch of various painkillers formulated for John arrives from one of Flora’s labs after the first time Sameen patches him.)

Like Doria, who takes great joy in passing on gossip from the neighboring town on her trips for food and Mass with a depth of feeling only Italian grandmothers can experience. Or at least, her gossip is shared with at least as much enjoyment as Bedelia shares gossip from the local galleries in Rome proper. Granted, Bedelia also takes gossip as an opportunity to scandalize Doria with the threesome she's having with a psychiatrist and his husband, so one type of gossip is way more entertaining than the other.

Then there's the revolving door of people constantly coming and going—curators, gallery owners, artists, financiers, bankers, politicians, Rome's socialite class and, of course, the many, many flavors of organized crime.

It is, in sum, really fucking weird.

John knows, intellectually, that a property this large and this old needs a staff to manage it. If anything, the staff on hand is a fraction of what the property needs in order to minimize the number of moving parts (and thus the number of potential threats) circulating in Santino’s vicinity.

John also knows, intellectually, that Santino’s business is a much larger operation than the Tarasovs, on the scale of a forest to a bush respectively. Viggo and Abram are a branch of the bratva—an influential branch on the East Coast, but a branch nonetheless, minor bosses in the scheme of things who still pay deference to the Russian seat of the High Table. Santino isn’t _a_ boss in the Camorra. He’s _the_ boss of the Camorra and one of the stronger of the Twelve Families of the High Table to boot. And while the Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta are nominally independent of him insofar as they have their own seats at the High Table, everyone knows the Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta couldn’t survive without him any more than a fish could survive out of water. It’s why Santino was the one doing spot cleaning for the dons of the Five Families in New York and not the Cosa Nostra High Table seat they nominally answer to. Because really, there’s not much point in pretending the Cosa Nostra High Table seat can mop up after his North American affiliates when they all know Santino’s the one holding his choke chain. A natural consequence of Santino’s ambition relative to the Tarasovs being on the scale of the Pacific Ocean to a pail, respectively.

John knows these things, intellectually. And yet.

He’s not used to being around so many people all the time. He was never around people that much when he worked for Viggo and Abram—Viggo called him in when he needed a job done and left him to his own devices otherwise. Abram was just afraid of him. John liked it that way.

Now, he’s constantly surrounded by people in some shape or form, and he doesn’t know what to do with them any more than they know what to do with him. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing here beyond the obvious, and normally he would sort that out by retreating to his own hideaway. Except his own hideaway is literally across the hall from his boss, and at least forty other people flit in and out of his general vicinity on any given day, with several interesting side effects.

For example, John spends the first week in a minor standoff with Doria on account of being unaccustomed to someone else cleaning for him and Doria taking personal offense at his insistence that he’s perfectly capable of cleaning his own space in order to make her life easier. “You take care of Santino,” she insists every time, snapping a towel at him to usher him out of the room. Sameen and Ares find this hysterically funny for reasons John can’t fathom.

The security staff writ large don't get to see him at work until about two weeks after he arrives, when a visit from the Nigerians ends in stabbing. They're all but vibrating in glee when they send the Nigerians home cowering and bloodied. It's more than a bit embarrassing and kind of a relief when Bedelia threatens to bash his head in with a brick for getting blood on the rug. At least he knows what to do with threats of bodily harm.

It's also a relief to be sent on his own after two and a half weeks in the house and return with the Croatians appropriately quaking in terror, though he’s surprised to find that he’s itching to go back to the house where he always feels like he’s standing on one foot.

After those two incidents, the household seems to settle into the notion that he’s not going anywhere. He still has the distinct sense that they’re waiting for something from him, though he doesn’t have the first clue what it is.

In the meantime, the story of that night in Viggo’s living room spreads like wildfire because of course it does. The story does endless good for Santino's reputation, at least in part for the confirmation that he is truly insane and not only survived Viggo Tarasov's Baba Yaga pointing a gun at his head but came out the other side with Viggo Tarasov's Baba Yaga now his own favorite Baba Yaga. And John does become Santino's favorite Baba Yaga. Where Viggo likes drama and glitz and gore, Santino prefers quietness and elegance and a certain flavor of swift, stunning brutality that leaves the walls running red as a woman slips into a silk dress, and John’s style meshes rather beautifully.

John supplants Ares at Santino's right hand as though he never belonged anywhere else. Most people have the good sense to be terrified about it, but Ares herself isn't annoyed. They're fond of each other, John and Ares. As much as John is fond of anyone, given that there's usually a void where his finer emotions ought to be. Which is a good thing, because as Santino's right and left hands respectively, John and Ares spend a lot of time in Santino's presence and even more time in each other's presence. Ares routinely calls Santino a maladjusted puppy, perhaps because of his curls. It's a sign of his affection for her that he lets her get away with it. Anyone else, including John Wick, would be stabbed in the jugular with a fork (which John does see Santino do once, from behind so as not to get blood all over his suit).

Then again, Ares is mute, and most people don't understand sign language.

They make a good pair, Ares and John. Ares is a Swiss army knife where John is a scalpel, and Sameen is a sledgehammer with lightning reflexes. Santino sends Ares and John when he wants to paint the town red and sends Sameen as their third when he wants the town razed, salted, and burned to ash on the way out, sometimes with Santino in the middle of the bloodshed like the eye of the storm and sometimes with Santino watching the blaze from the next town over.

Then there’s Santino himself.

John always knew Viggo was afraid of him. Santino isn’t. He’s not afraid of anything. It’s not arrogance—he knows, theoretically, that there are things that can kill him. It’s that fear isn’t something that ever seems to occur to Santino, in that it would make no more sense to him to be afraid of not being alive than it would to be afraid of not being the color blue. Then again, emotions as a concept don’t seem to occur to him either, except for anger. John can relate.

On the one hand, it means Santino is functionally impossible to intimidate. On the other hand, it means Santino has a purely cognitive understanding of risk and no qualms whatsoever about taking astonishingly bold gambles with important pieces as the stakes, a fact which drives Flora up the fucking walls. The fact that Santino has at least plans A through M at any given time to make a situation work in his favor doesn’t diminish Flora’s irritation, nor does the fact that he’s brilliant enough to pull them off and as calm as the dead in a crisis. Or the fact that, despite not feeling fear, Santino _does_ feel adrenaline (translation: it takes quite a lot of excitement to get any response out of him, and he thrives on pushing situations for the thrill of seeing what will happen, which also drives Flora up the fucking walls.)

The fact that John just shrugs and goes along with it just pisses Flora off even more.

“You do not just _go along with it_ when he gets a fucking batshit idea,” she snaps at him in the car after a memorable incident involving Albanian drug smugglers. “You tell him it’s a fucking batshit idea. Then you convince him to do something that won’t get him killed.”

“He wasn’t going to get killed. I had plenty of ammunition and a clear line to the door.” It doesn’t bear reminding her that Santino can’t be convinced of anything unless he wants to be.

“See?” Santino says from the backseat. “We’re fine.”

“You’re fucking perfect for each other, I swear to God,” Flora grumbles under her breath, reloading the TR1 in her lap to fire out the window. John pretends not to hear her so as not to clarify what that means. It helps that they’re being shot at by Albanian drug smugglers.

Caroline, for her part, seems to think it’s both reasonable and obvious that John should go along with Santino’s batshit gambles, which also drives Flora up the fucking walls. If anything, Caroline raises an eyebrow at John as if daring him to disappoint her by not going along with it and returning Santino unharmed and smug with victory. And one should never, _ever_ disappoint Caroline Turing.

John becomes the shadow over Santino's shoulder, spending most of his time in Santino's presence even when he’s not there to put the fear of God in visiting business partners. He thought he would be ill at ease around Santino, given that they met over a one-on-one round of Russian roulette, but it’s the opposite. He’s more at ease around Santino than he is around anyone else, and Santino seems entirely content to have John in his vicinity, and as a consequence, John spends most of his time around Santino, even if he spends most of that time quietly reading while Santino plays music in the galleries or works in the study.

Apparently, this confuses and kind of disturbs the rest of the household, which John doesn’t realize until a month after he gets there when Ares and Sameen drag him to one of the security staff outbuildings to, according to Ares, _be social for a damn change_. Or at least sit in the same room and read his book while Ares cleans out the boys at cards.

“So, uh,” he looks up to find Lorenzo looking at him like he’s not entirely sure whether he should have just kept shuffling cards, “everything cool with you and the boss?”

John blinks. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know,” Lorenzo says, fidgeting with the cards, even though John has the sense he does know and doesn’t want to put his foot in it.

“Just kind of seems like you resent each other, is all,” Athos adds, because he has the social graces of a brick. He’s promptly kicked by Matteo.

That’s even more confusing than John thought it would be. “Why would we resent each other?”

“You just kind of sit in a room together and don’t acknowledge each other’s existence,” Constantine says, taking the deck out of Lorenzo’s hands to deal. “Or talk to each other. Or look at each other half the time. Or give any indication you’ve noticed each other.”

“Pretty unnerving, actually,” Athos adds, squawking in pain when Matteo kicks him again.

 _What these shit-for-brains are trying to say_ , Ares signs, ignoring the offended looks the rest of the table gives her, _is that you don’t have to spend all your time around Santino. He’ll let you be on your own if you want to. He’s a dick, but he’s not that kind of dick._

 _He tells me to leave if he doesn’t want me there_ , John signs back, still thoroughly confused. Which is true—Santino is not at all shy about telling John to fuck off if he wants him to leave. Otherwise, John is entirely welcome and under no more obligation to engage with Santino than Santino is under any obligation to engage with him. It’s kind of soothing, and he has the distant sense that Santino is also soothed by having someone other than Caroline and Flora who doesn’t require him to keep his masks on.

Ares stares at him with a look of confusion he didn’t think her face capable of. Then she throws her hands up with the all-too-familiar _Lord grant me strength_ look that Santino inspires in Doria at least once a day. _Jesus Christ, they’re a matched set of weirdos._

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Sameen says, plopping down next to Ares with two fresh glasses of bourbon.

 _You have an Axis II Personality Disorder_ , Ares signs.

 _Love me_ , Sameen signs back, grinning when Ares gives her a loud smacking kiss.

“Stop showing each other your cards,” Anthony groans. John rolls his eyes and returns to his book.

Regardless of how little sense it makes to the rest of the household, Santino and John fit together surprisingly well. Especially regarding business. And in much the same way John spends most of his idle time around Santino, he tends to spend most of his work time around Santino unless Santino explicitly gives him a job to do elsewhere. For one thing, Santino tends to poke things with a stick as often as he pulls marionette strings, which means it’s usually more fun around Santino. Also, Santino seems to be as quietly pleased by this as he is by John appearing in the galleries to listen to him play.

So, John sees Santino's apartment in Rome after the first few weeks in the house. After all, Santino goes there a few times a week to conduct business and check on his two business partners. Business at the apartment is a bit different than the house, which makes it entertaining in different ways.

Caroline is a frequent visitor there to run through the books and algorithms on the AI running the myriad black-box funds she and Santino use to move, clean, grow, and steal High Table money through the global markets with the agility and grace of a world-class ballerina. She also comes when she needs excellent wine and a safe place to bitch about the legal and illegal clientele. Santino reminds her to let them choke on the $130 billion AUM and the hefty interest tacked onto the money they return to the company coffers. Flora reminds her that unlike most hedge fund managers, she occasionally gets to choke her irritating clientele. That usually cheers her up.

Santino also tends to use the apartment as a snub to people he doesn’t want around the house, which means those meetings are snarkier and only occasionally dull.

In any case, it's a pleasant place to be, the top two floors of a 16th-century palazzo on Via di Montserrato, one of the quieter and lovelier streets in the city. The apartment and the building housing it were apparently inherited from Santino’s mother, Massima, who was apparently also responsible for her son's interest in blending the historic and the contemporary, if the overtly modern flares in the apartment are anything to go by. And his taste in art, if some of the peculiarities of the apartment are anything to go by.

But it's not until about two months after working for Santino that he sees what else Santino uses the apartment for.

They're at an art exhibition as a pretext for meeting with a black market art dealer for Bedelia and checking in on the smuggling operations of one of Santino's local capos for Flora, which means John is riding the high with his mind still and steady. Until he sees Santino standing close to a young man, a young, minor Camorra boss without a hope in hell of winning him over. And yet, the young boss says something in Santino's ear with a hand to his elbow, and Santino smiles and laughs at it.

It takes longer than it should to realize that he’s flirting with Santino. Worse, Santino is flirting back, has the young and stupid Camorra boss lapping up his blue eyes.

And when the young and stupid Camorra boss gets in the back of the car with Santino when they ride back to the apartment, and when Santino drags him laughing to the second floor of the apartment and toward the hall to the master bedroom with a look over his shoulder at John meaning _don't follow me_ , John knows exactly where this is going.

Ares shrugs. _He does that sometimes. Don't mind him._ She heads for the stairs to surface food from the kitchen on the bottom floor while Sameen tells him to put one of the records on the turntable. He puts on Nina Simone's _Forbidden Fruit_ , listening to "No Good Man" with no small amount of relief that Santino had the good sense to soundproof the entire apartment.

It is a well-known fact (among those high enough up the food chain to know it, anyway) that Santino prefers men. In the mob, in any other man, it would be as good as a bullet between the eyes. But then, Santino D'Antonio is a soft-spoken, eccentric art collector on one hand and on the other a cold-blooded psychopath with a known habit of separating people from their eyeballs if the sight of his homosexuality offends them. So it is simply a remarked-upon fact among those high enough up the food chain to know it that Santino likes to collect the very best in their heavily male world, whether by contract or by other means, for a few hours or for longer, for business or for pleasure.

John knows that eyebrows raised when Santino collected him. While the acquisition was bold and certainly impressive, there was little apparent reason for it beyond Santino's whim. And where Santino's whims lie, there's usually a business deal, an excellent party, a bloodbath, sex, or all the above in no particular order of importance. Since none of the former three seem forthcoming, murmurings suggest the fourth option, since John Wick is known to be quite useful for at least three of the four options and murmurings suggest his finesse and focus with the first three suggest a promising finesse and focus with the fourth.

But the fourth option isn't forthcoming either. Instead, John comfortably occupies his position as the shadow over Santino's shoulder, and every once in a while, Santino spends the evening in his apartment in Rome sleeping with a man, though he never brings men to the house and never once lets them stay the night in the apartment. It's the last two facts that prevent John from being too terribly annoyed by their invitation into Santino's periphery as if they have any right to be there, settling into the second-floor sitting room clean his guns on the coffee table with a record on until Santino re-emerges to usher the man of the night out and settle at the couch behind John to watch John clean his guns and listen to whatever record John chose for that evening. Santino's life isn't a calm or quiet one, and he supposes Santino is owed his fun where he can get it. It's Santino's business and none of his own.

And if John occasionally uses his days off to go into Rome to work off steam with men or women, that's his own business. And if it doesn't work off any steam at all, if he feels off-balance until he arrives back at the house where he belongs to settle into the sound of harpsichord or piano under Santino's clever hands, that's his own business too.

His only consolation is that at least he has the D'Antonio sibling with better taste in bedfellows. John meets Gianna when he and Flora are sent to babysit her in Paris during a school break. Or, rather, Flora appoints herself to babysit while John prevents Gianna’s breakup with a German politician's son from turning into an international incident. It's unclear who's most annoyed by the situation. In any case, the facts remain the same: Gianna is twenty-one, sixteen years Santino's junior and with sixteen years poorer taste in men. Because while John is peeved by Santino's choices in men, at least Santino has the sense to only keep them around for one-night flings, and in any case, Santino's taste in men is simply irritating rather than irritatingly well-stocked in Ukrainian guns.

Even so, for all his annoyance every time Santino slips away to sleep with someone, John finds with time that he likes the shape of his life now, with Santino.

John thought he would miss his house in New York, thought he would miss the quiet and the stillness. The D'Antonio estate is rarely quiet and never still. But in time, as he’s sent out for jobs on his own and keeps coming back to the noise and bustle of the house, it becomes soothing, in a way, to know that he's never entirely alone.

He also thought he would get bored or tetchy in such close proximity to Santino. Viggo generally treated him politely and left him to his own devices until he was called to work, a respectful arm's length which John gratefully returned. With Santino, he never seems to wander far from Santino's periphery, finding himself out of sorts when he does and even further out of sorts on his days off. It's worse if he happens to travel on his own on business without Santino, though it is somewhat abated by the fact of having a job to do. He's startled to find he prefers it, being in Santino's periphery. He would have murdered Viggo if they spent that much time together, and yet, Santino is nothing like Viggo. John often finds himself wandering in the direction of music from the galleries to listen to Santino play, letting the sound wash over him so that the noise of the rest of the house fades away, or perching somewhere in a room to read while Santino works. He's not expected to talk in these moments if he doesn't want to. He's not expected to do anything except be there if he wants to be. It's that, more than anything, that lets him find his footing in the D'Antonio house, in the Camorra business.

And so John settles into life surrounded by the ebb and flow of people, becomes used to speaking Italian instead of English, becomes intimately familiar with the details of Santino's estate, knows every nook and cranny like he built it himself. The easier to hide weapons if need be or slip around without being bothered. As he is this night after a few visiting bratva thought they'd get clever.

He pads quietly through the house, nodding to Valentine and Yvette on his way through. They all know better than to comment on John and Ares's state of affairs after returning from work, though Ares is vibrating with the fun of it. She peels off to the kitchen with a wave and little regard for the fact that she still has bloody knuckles, leaving John to go in the opposite direction, following the sound of piano music and find Santino in one of the galleries as he often is, seated at the Steinway with a glass of bourbon set on it, playing in the humid night air.

He looks up from the keys as though he's not at all surprised to find John standing there singed and smelling of gun smoke, though John knows there's no way he could have heard John approach over the sound of the music. “Are you here to murder me, John?”

It's a question Santino asks occasionally when John creeps up on him in the night. It's Santino's own private joke, of a kind, the closest he ever comes to acknowledging when John surprises him. “No.”

Santino smiles faintly and continues playing. “Pity.”

John watches Santino play, letting the music wash over him like it can wash away the bloodshed of the last two hours. It almost works, but for the smell. "It's beautiful."

"It's Beethoven," Santino replies, as though it's no trouble to him to continue dancing his hands across the keys to shape Beethoven while holding a conversation. "I prefer it on the harpsichord. Piano sounds like a memory."

"Beautiful memory, even so."

"Even so." Santino hums, closing his eyes as the melody continues. "Did it go well?"

"It's been handled."

"That's a yes." He opens his eyes as his fingers finally still, standing up to take the bourbon from its resting place and hold it out to John. "Drink this and go get cleaned up. You smell like blood and bullets."

John does, the bourbon going down warm and smooth as slipping into a dream. Santino seems entirely committed to bettering John's tastes in liquor, though he never announced any such effort, simply makes a point of handing John excellent alcohol until John gets in the habit of asking for it when they find themselves in an occasion where John is socially expected to sip a drink but keep his wits sharp. He feels Santino's quiet pleasure every time he does.

It's that quiet pleasure that throws John. It surfaces when John drinks the good liquor Santino offers him or when John wears a suit Santino has made for him, but also when Santino watches John's hands at work with a gun or a knife, or when Santino watches John pausing to drink in the bodies tangled together while Death looks curiously on in Klimt's _Death and Life_ in the upstairs sitting room just past his bedroom, his favorite of the many priceless masterpieces in Santino's house, or when Santino looks up from playing piano or harpsichord at all hours of day or night to find John an attendant shadow in the room. When Santino looks up to find John watching him too.

So John drinks his bourbon and showers the night off, seeing Santino's clever hands drawing music out of silence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Santino's apartment is derived from a very real apartment owned by a designer named Livia Rebecchini (the location and the bones, anyway). You can see it here: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/livia-rebecchini-rome-apartment-article. The actual design of the apartment is quite different. We'll get there. Such things you have to look forward to in *glances at watch* three chapters, to be exact. 
> 
> There's a quip in there about pain medication. According to the Cut interviewee, she can usually expect medication not to work as intended, including pain medication. It's unclear why that is, exactly, though my (completely unprofessional) theory is that our experience of pain is partially attached to empathy, which someone higher up the psychopathy scale wouldn't have. As such, Santino, John, and Sameen would probably need medication tailored for them.


	4. tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets a word of friendly advice, Santino gets an answer to a question, a party finally gets interesting, Ares gets the last laugh, and two of Santino's security boys get the dubious honor of learning more than they ever wanted to know about their boss's sex life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, we found the chapter that inspired this whole monstrosity. If you've read lizard_witch's "Ending Badly", you'll notice the scene in John's room bears a striking resemblance to Chapter 2 of that fic. That's because that scene in John's room in "Ending Badly" was the inspiration for this whole mess, because I wanted to see that situation with Santino in his power. 
> 
> Also, the scene heavily draws cues from that fic because I don't think I'm that good at writing this kind of scene. So...everything is lizard_witch's fault?

A week and another of Santino’s irritating one-night stands later, Santino brings him to London to take care of a deal with a local branch of the Irish mob and help one of Santino's High Table bookkeepers and launderers, Annie Croy, send a few messages about late payments. It's not difficult work, but it does engage him. In any case, he understands why Santino is rather fond of Annie, in Santino's own way—Annie is an unflappable woman with a Cockney accent and a better head for numbers than the entire London Stock Exchange. Annie is fond of Santino in turn, in her own way—Santino is a man of taste who is willing to spend money on things that are worth it, unlike many mafiosos she deals with on a regular basis who simply have a taste for money. More importantly, Santino is a man with good taste in art who is more than happy to discuss art with her once they finish discussing business.

Annie is fond of John, too—John Wick is known to be talented, and Annie loves seeing talented men at work. And strolling into a room knowing she has the most muscle.

They have a spare evening, which Annie convinces Santino to spend on the poker game she hosts in the back room of her jazz club, Cave of the Golden Calf, helped on by tempting Santino with a painting she plans to acquire for him through side discussions in the course of the game, Lucian Freud's _The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer_. Annie always reserves a seat at the table for Santino at her poker game, and it benefits Santino to take advantage of it when he's in London because Annie's poker game is a tour of London's upper echelons.

Both games, technically, because Annie has two monthly poker games. One hosts the who's who of London: the financiers who move the money of Europe, the London chief of police, a rotating door of literati, a few of the more influential members of the British Parliament, a young man in glasses with floppy brown hair that may or may not be the head of MI6, a man with an umbrella that may or may not be the British government, movers and shakers of the London art scene who come to ply Annie for art deals as much as play cards. That's the game where Santino visits various friends from various corners of influence to ensure their corners of influence remain aligned with Santino's interests, people whose problems he makes go away, people whose needs he meets as no one above the table can, people who owe him, people he owns. The second poker game hosts the who's who of the criminal underground. That's the game where Santino's seat is implicitly reserved as one of Annie's favorite business partners.

"Penny for your thoughts?" John looks up from his perch at the bar to see Annie holding out a drink.

"Thanks." He takes it and sips it because Annie keeps her club stocked with excellent alcohol, but sips only, because this is a poker game populated by the who's who of London’s criminal underground. "Nicely done with the painting."

Annie smiles, flush with victory. As if there was ever any doubt Annie could get the painting—much like Santino, few things stand in Annie Croy's way when she decides she wants something, especially when she wants artwork to curry favor with Santino. "Thanks. Nicely done with the O'Hares."

"Thanks." The O'Hares never stood much chance, but they were nonetheless engaging.

Annie traces his eyes to where he's watching Santino's clever hands around his cards. "How is it, living in paradise with the devil himself?"

He has a feeling she's asking about more than life on the estate and takes the easy way out, holding up his glass. "Improving my taste in alcohol."

When her eyes settle back on him, they're knowing. "Is that all?"

He glances at her, but his gaze is drawn back to Santino, laughing and dancing circles around one of the other players. "That's all."

Annie snorts.

He turns to her with a raised eyebrow. "Were you expecting something else?"

Annie just shakes her head. "He didn't acquire you by accident."

"I got that impression.” After all, Santino did walk into Viggo’s living room with a game in mind and a revolver in hand.

"Not a whim, either."

"What then, if not a whim?"

"Admiration. And not just for your talent with guns." She looks John up and down, where she knows his guns lie hidden by his suit. A suit rather more refined than the plain blacks John would get for himself prior to working for Santino, leaving Santino's touch on display in the minor details that draw the eye. "He would do more than admire, you know. If your tastes run that way."

Annie is one of those who know Santino's tastes run to men. She also knows full well that John has used nights off in London with women and men before, because this isn’t the first time Santino has brought John to London and Annie is in the habit of knowing everything in her city that might prove useful or entertaining. "Are you making a suggestion?"

"An observation. And a word of friendly advice, if you want it." Her eyes flick to Santino, drawing the art dealer in like a moth to a flame. "As a fellow admirer of the beautiful and rare, I can say that Santino shares my view on both beautiful rarities and money."

"Which is?"

"That beautiful rarities, like money, are meant for the hands to enjoy touching." She stands from the bar, drifting back to her other players. "Enjoy the drink."

Santino exits the poker game an hour later with several thousand in spare change, a painting he's rather pleased with, and an art dealer eager to do further business with him. John stands from the bar and falls into step as Santino's security flanks them, feeling Annie Croy's eyes at his back.

He turns that over in his head that night, lying awake in his room in the Continental. Taking its shape and weight, relative to his own irritation every time Santino sleeps with other men.

The Freud painting travels to Rome, but they travel to France and check into the Continental de Paris. Santino gives him the morning to his own devices, which he spends toiling around Paris in the bustle of ordinary people while listening for Santino's faintly accented French to root him in the noise, even though he knows Santino is elsewhere. Around lunch, Ares texts him to rejoin them.

Santino waits for him in the Musee D'Orsay, sitting in front of William Bouguereau's _Dante et Virgil_ in a contemplative mood. John perches beside him, tracing the paint lines with his eyes. Despite the painting's name belonging to Dante and Virgil, they stand in the shadows in the background, watching the alchemist Cappochio being bent back and bitten by Gianni Schicchi, their bodies frozen in the midst of the violence, Schicchi contorted and taut as he sinks his teeth into Cappochio's neck with the promise of a coming blood spray, Cappochio leaning into the bite.

When Santino speaks, his voice is subdued, as if in deference to the quiet of the gallery. "Are you here to murder me, John?"

Aside from being his own private joke, Santino asks him that question occasionally when he's in a contemplative mood. He asked it on that first flight back to Rome, though at the time, John didn't answer. After all, Santino acquired him after Viggo called in a Marker for Santino's death, and the answer seemed abundantly obvious. That time, Santino laughed. This time, John remains looking at the painting, the bodies tangled together like so many bodies that have fallen before him in fights and in killing.

Santino turns to him, his contemplative mood settling on John like the invitation of a warm blanket. When John turns to him, there’s a faint smile on his lips and a faint sparkle of amusement in his eye. “Have you ever thought about it? Murdering me?”

John doesn't answer. He doesn’t need to. Of course he's thought about murdering Santino. He thinks about murdering anyone, in case he ever needs to. And he can't help but wonder, by the question Santino keeps asking him, by the way Santino leaned into the gun with a spark in his eyes the first night he met John, how Santino would greet death at John's hands. If he would lean into it. If his blue eyes would be more alive than they've ever been.

Santino's answering laugh is warm and delighted. "How would you do it, I wonder? If it were in this room now?" He nods to a woman sketching a painting ten feet to their left, oblivious to the loose net of armed-to-the-teeth bodyguards scattered throughout the room. "Her pen?" He nods to an old man admiring a Caravaggio. "His glasses?" He inclines his head to where he knows one of John's many guns lies concealed by his suit jacket, his eyes bright. "Your gun?"

John considers that for a moment, because he wants the brightness in to stay in Santino’s eyes. But he only needs to consider a moment, because his mind only settles on one worthwhile answer. "My hands."

Santino hums, smiling. "Intimate. How exciting."

"Ares would have her gun out before I could get far."

"You and I both know that suit jacket is bulletproof, and you're not foolish enough to leave your head in Ares's line of fire in the time it would take her to cross the room." He does not comment that John only needs the time it would take Ares to cross the room to kill Santino with his hands. Instead, he unfolds from his seat, watching John rise after him. "Back to business, then."

Business is the wedding of a lesser D'Antonio cousin that Santino has no interest in attending but must nonetheless as the reigning D'Antonio and as the head of the Camorra. Constanza D'Antonio is the daughter of one of the lesser bosses who keep Paris in check for Santino, as well as a schoolmate and close friend of Gianna, though Constanza's interests run to orchestral music and her talents to the flute where Gianna's interests run to art theft and her talents to forgery. Gianna's attendance doubles as an opportunity for Santino to check in on his freshly graduated sister, or rather, to check in on her dealings in Paris to make sure she's not getting up to trouble he doesn't approve of before Flora ships her to New York to cut her teeth on an art ring. It helps that they have business to attend with Flora the following day demanding John and Ares’s skillsets, one requiring John and Ares to pay lengthy visits to the resident sommelier at the Continental de Paris in preparation. _That_ Santino is looking forward to and will tolerate the wedding in the meantime.

Unfortunately, that leaves the wedding in the meantime. And while Gianna is delighted by her brother's attendance and the blue-eyed painter friend she brings as a date is charming (as is his talent as an Impressionist forger) the rest of the wedding is populated by D'Antonio peons without enough social graces between them. Increasingly few social graces as the reception in the Continental ballroom wears on and the French wine flows free, because they are entirely too excited to try and make an impression on the reigning D'Antonio and entirely too eager to gossip about Baba Yaga. Among other things.

Sometime around one a.m., Ares nudges him and signs, _Want some fun?_

_Why?_

She nods to one of the bridesmaids with a smirk. _She's probably going to make a move in the next hour or so._

Unfortunately for said bridesmaid, she also announced too loudly while staring in John's direction that she was looking to land a husband. _I'll pass_.

 _Lame_.

 _You're just bored because Sameen is in Shanghai_.

Santino sent her to terrorize gunrunners to ensure a shipment makes it through to the Shanghai Dalu as a favor to the Triad representative of the High Table, which promises to bring excellent stories and an explosion or five when she returns to Rome to tell of her escapades. _Just because she's nuts doesn't mean you can't have fun_.

He glances pointedly around the room. _We're working_.

She snorts. _We haven't been working for two hours and we're in the Continental ballroom surrounded by camorristi. No one's stupid enough to get excommunicated._ She nods over John's shoulder with a grin. _Santino wants you._

He looks up to find Santino watching him and stands up from the bar.

 _I'm out for the night_ , Ares signs. _Live a little_.

He ignores her and makes his way to Santino, who dismisses one of the cousins to clear a space for John at his side, leaving the table empty but for the two of them. Pointing fingers and elbows follow John’s progress, the first time he's moved since they arrived in the room hours ago. He slips into the chair beside Santino without getting an invitation or asking for one.

Santino sets a finger of whiskey beside his hand. "Enjoying the party?"

He takes a drink, tasting the whiskey on his tongue. "I should be asking you. You've been busier than I have."

"You got the better deal, I'm afraid."

"You've made your appearance. You could go upstairs."

Santino hums. "I could. But the party just got more interesting." It's a lie. Santino is clearly annoyed by the party. But he's also looking at John over his drink, a look not unlike when he looks up from the piano to find John watching him, or when he asks John if he's thinking of murdering him. "You could go upstairs if you wanted. There's no real need for security here."

He sees Ares in his head. _Live a little_. Hears echoes of Annie Croy. _"_ I could." But Santino is looking at him, and the party just got more interesting.

Santino starts to reply, but movement behind John catches his eye and his face tightens in a flash of annoyance. John looks up and immediately knows why—the bridesmaid, apparently emboldened by John's movement across the room, finally decided to approach. She makes it all of three steps and freezes, looking to his right like a rabbit staring down a lion.

John glances over to see Santino meeting her eyes with a few layers of his masks removed, which is to say he's wearing the eyes he would use to separate someone's lungs from their ribcage with a butter knife. She flees back to her own table.

Intriguing.

"She's the daughter of one of your local capos." One of the ones Santino has to get along with by virtue of geographic proximity.

"How lovely for her. But I can think of better company to spend my time with," Santino replies, his eyes settling back on John, the look on his face returned. Santino tilts his head sideways to the room without looking away from John. "She's been admiring you all night."

 _And that seems to annoy you_ , John thinks but does not say. He considers for a moment, measuring Santino's look. Measuring how much he wants it to himself. And maybe because it’s one a.m., maybe because he’s been stewing on his irritation with Santino’s one-night stands since they left for London, maybe because he’s been stewing on Annie Croy’s friendly advice since the poker game, maybe because he just saw Santino glare off a girl about to hit on him, or maybe because Santino is now looking at him like the party just got interesting, John says, "Annie Croy said you admired me too," in a low voice to ensure only Santino can hear him.

Santino's lips twitch. It's lucky for Annie Croy that she's Annie Croy, or she might not have survived telling John that. "You're a talented man." But his voice has dropped too, just for John to hear.

So John decides to venture something, because it’s one a.m., neither today nor tomorrow, an unreal time that swallows up the parts of a question that make it too real and too complicated to ask in the harsh light of day. "She said you admired me for more than my talent with guns."

"Annie Croy was wrong," Santino murmurs, continuing before John has time to feel a bucket of ice over his head. "Admire, present tense."

John sips his drink, recalibrating his balance. Contemplates whether to push it. Whether it’s a good idea. But Santino is looking at him like the party just got interesting, and whether or not it’s a good idea feels increasingly irrelevant. "She also said you would do more than admire.”

Santino’s lips twitch in a way that says it’s completely irrelevant whether or not it’s a good idea. “Did she?”

It’s not a yes. It’s not a no either. But Santino’s tilt toward him says it might just be a good idea. “If my tastes run that way." 

Santino's lips widen into a smile that says the party has _finally_ gotten interesting. "Do they?"

There’s something purring in John’s chest with the victory of that smile, of Santino leaning an inch too close when he gives it, of Santino looking at him like he very much wants John to say his tastes run that way. Asking John to agree that this is the best idea he’s had in a while. "I never saw much reason to limit my hands to one thing."

"You said earlier you would murder me with your hands." Santino's eyes flick to John's hand, holding his glass.

"You called it intimate."

"Isn't it?" Santino hums. "How would you do it?"

He hears Annie Croy in his mind. _Beautiful rarities, like money, are meant for the hands to enjoy touching_. "I could tell you." He takes the hand not holding his glass, the one hidden from view by the tablecloth, and runs it up Santino's leg without blinking, feeling his mind come into focus as it does when killing. Or looking at Santino. "Or I could show you."

"And you put on such wonderful shows for me." Santino's smile curls into something else, then he stands, dropping a coin on the table for the Continental staff. "But I don't intend to share this one with an audience."

Eyes trail them as they exit, though no one tries to follow. Possibly something in Santino's posture that says he would murder them with a champagne flute if they tried.

Renato and Aristide, Santino's standing security for the evening, fall into step as they walk. But when they pass near an alcove, tucked into a corner and just out of view of the hallway if one were positioned just so, John gives them a look meaning _wait_ _here or else_ and reaches out to catch Santino's lapel. When he pulls Santino into the alcove, Santino catches him by the shoulder and positions him just so, and they meet in the middle.

Santino tastes like high-end wine and kisses like he wants to crawl into John’s skin. John catches the back of his hair and holds him in place to be kissed, not coming up for air until he sees stars.

Santino leans into him as John pulls away and straightens Santino's lapels, which does nothing for the fact that Santino looks like he's been kissed breathless. "I think I'll enjoy this show." He scrapes his nails on John's shirt and lowers his hand just as they step back into view of the hall.

Renato and Aristide, despite not seeing, look like they heard everything that just happened and are trying _very hard_ not to comment. Not with the boss swanning by with his favorite murderer too close at his back.

Miraculously, there's no one waiting for the elevators when they get there, and no one tries to follow on the elevators either, despite the party still being in full swing.

"You never did answer," Santino murmurs when the doors close. "How your tastes run, in the specifics."

John sees the moment Renato and Aristide process that sentence in context of tone. He can also see Santino enjoying this. "I've never been a picky eater."

Santino leans against the elevator wall, observing him through hooded eyes with a smirk. "Do you have a sweet tooth, or do you prefer a kick?"

"I prefer something with a bit of bite."

Santino's smirk widens to show his teeth. "How much bite?"

Aristide is going red in the ears. "Enough to still taste it the next day."

Santino all but purrs. "Adventurous."

Renato is visibly biting down on his tongue. "What way do your tastes run?"

Santino laughs, a low sound in his throat that John wants to taste. "Dessert."

It's only because Baba Yaga meets their eyes in the mirrored walls of the elevator that Renato and Aristide keep straight faces. It's still a near thing, though, which is why they don't even pause when Santino stops at John's room instead of his own and ever-so-politely orders them to fuck off.

John's room is a rather good one, in deference to Santino, but compared to Santino's suite, it's positively cramped. There are also far fewer flat surfaces, which means the bed is covered in the sommelier's wares, broken up by course with ammunition and cleaning supplies.

Santino inspects the array of weapons on the bed as if analyzing a Michelangelo and not omens of an oncoming massacre. Then again, he’s a connoisseur of death and the reason John is being sent as death’s own emissary. "You and your German varietals," he murmurs, turning a gun in his hands and setting it back among its Austrian cousins.

"You're the one who supplies them."

"True." He looks up at John after toying with one of the larger knives, his eyes are sparkling. "Are you thinking of murdering me, John?"

John kisses him hard enough to hurt, his fingers clenched in Santino's hair like he means to pull it out. It's soft in his fingers. Santino's growl and his hands when they shove John into the wall are not. John bites him in reward. One hand comes to the back of his neck to hold him still, the other to grab hold of his ass. John forces a leg between his thighs, Santino’s hips arching into the pressure.

He lets Santino roll his hips into John’s leg while sucking Santino’s tongue like he means to separate it from his skull. Then one arm snakes around Santino’s back to haul him back by the hair, his lips working over Santino’s exposed throat to distract from his grip changing on Santino’s leg. When Santino leans his weight into him, John picks him up, giving Santino just enough time to wrap his legs around him before both of them fall into the floor at the end of the bed. Santino grunts when John’s weight bears down on him, but it doesn’t stop him from dragging John down to kiss him.

His goal accomplished, John lets his hands wander, tracing up Santino’s leg and over his hip to untuck his shirt, running callouses against Santino’s smooth skin. When Santino loosens one button at a time, John follows his progress by biting a stinging trail.

But when John sits up to shed his shirt, Santino’s clever hands speeding up the process and skating fingernails across bare skin, Santino catches him off balance and flips them over. 

For a moment, Santino just looks at him, admiring. He nuzzles into John’s neck before going slowly lower and taunting him in sensitive places with his tongue and teeth, drawing shuddering breaths as he goes. Then he bites down hard, letting John arch into it, leaving behind bruises and screeching teeth marks, his fingernails clawing into John on the way. John closes his eyes and lets his head roll back into the floor as Santino works over his chest, his hips, his inner thighs, places his teeth could break fragile skin and keep going until he tore out something vital.

When John opens his eyes, the blue in Santino’s eyes is almost entirely swallowed by blackness. And when Santino works his way up and kisses him long and deep, he pushes against Santino’s chest—not enough to push him away, just enough to break the kiss and get his attention. And bite him again. “No more playing.”

Santino breathes a laugh, his hand straying to John’s cheek and his eyes wild as a starving animal. “Then tell me what you want instead.”

John catches Santino’s thumb in his teeth where it rests on his lips. “I made a promise to murder you with my hands.”

“And I’m very much looking forward to it.” Santino nips under his ear. “So fuck me the way you would want me to fuck you,” he catches John as he starts to sit up and reach for the bedside table, capturing that hand while his other hand claws into John’s chest above his heart and his teeth bite John’s neck just above his pulse, “and show me how gentle you’re not.”

So John sits them both up, pins Santino back against the carpet, turns him over, and shows him how gentle he’s not.

His fingers are too rough to prep Santino easily, and when he pushes in, it’s too fast and too soon, forcing a cracked moan from Santino’s lips. He whines when John fucks him shallowly, opening one blue eye to fix on John from under a tumble of curls. A hand finds John’s hip and grips tight enough to bruise, pulling John to ride into him as he hisses, “ _Harder._ ” So John sets a brutal pace, pulling out almost entirely only to shove his way back in again with a harsh snap of the hips and ripping a wail from Santino when he does, his voice steadily going raw and rough with every successive time John makes an earnest effort to tear him apart, his hand never loosening from a death grip on John’s hip.

He feels the vibration of Santino's voice and Santino’s beating pulse as he wraps an arm around his chest to keep him still, feels Santino press into him as close as he can get, feels his mind narrowing with the same focus he uses to maim and kill and thinks this isn’t so far away from murdering Santino after all.

Santino comes with his teeth sunk into John’s wrist, barely stifling a howl as he holds on hard enough to draw blood, his blue eyes squeezed shut. John fucks him straight through it until Santino is mewling and shivering and his hand is purpling John’s hip as he follows with a feral sound into Santino's spine.

He finally collapses sideways into the floor flush with Santino’s back, one wrist still held in Santino’s teeth, Santino still shivering against him. John wraps his other arm around Santino to smooth his hair from his eyes, and Santino sucks on his wrist, his teeth still clenched and his eyes still closed tightly as he gulps air through his nose. When he finally does let go, he leans into the hand in his hair, panting hot breaths against John’s bloodied wrist.

They lay there until they can’t stand the feeling of laying in their own filth any longer, Santino slipping free with a low groan and pulling himself stiffly upright to drag John with him to the shower, clinging to John to hold himself together even as John clings to Santino to anchor himself to the earth, neither letting go longer than they need to, both of them holding on tighter than they need to.

John arrives at breakfast the next morning miraculously put together, given that he spent his shower staring at the tile recalling Santino pinning him against it a few hours earlier to kiss and touch and luxuriate in the feeling, both of them still dizzy with the high of endorphins and the aftershock of raw nerve endings coming down from sensory overwhelm. Fortunately, the Continental staff are consummate professionals and give no indication that anyone heard anything coming from John Wick’s room last night, and Renato and Aristide and company are all definitely too terrified of both John and Santino to gossip about seeing John accompany a marginally less ruined and thoroughly sated Santino to his own suite at an ungodly hour and probably too terrified of both John and Santino to gossip about the filthy kiss Santino pulled him into by his hair before opening the door. At least until they get back to the house, anyway. And if the D’Antonio peons would love to gossip about the wild night their king may or may not have had, well. They are peons, after all, and the rooms of the whole wedding party are all several floors away.

Then there’s Ares, who keeps staring at John over her espresso looking entirely too entertained for her own health.

 _What?_ he signs.

She glances between him and Santino's turned back, wagging her eyebrows in a reminder that, despite being mute, she is not at all deaf. Also, her room adjoins John's.

John raises a middle finger under the table.

If Ares weren't mute, her laughter would be loud enough to rattle the foundations. As it is, John buries a knife into the wall an inch to the left of her ear, which earns him venomous glares from the Continental staff and does not wipe the shit-eating grin off her face.

“Behave, children,” Santino scolds over the peons' excited tittering and Flora's poorly-disguised giggling. The way his blue eyes dance when they settle on John says he has no interest whatsoever in making John Wick behave, lighting on John's wrist as he removes the knife from the wall. His sleeve is only just long enough to cover angry teeth marks.

Ares just laughs harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it still a slow burn if they screw in chapter 4? I maintain that it is. An emotional slow burn for people who don't have emotions. Screwing's the easy part. Everything else? Well. We've got a long-ass fic to unravel that.


	5. sunsets on the evil eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night in Paris doesn’t vanish as the city vanishes from sight. Instead, it stretches into the langorous reality of weeks and he and Santino fall into...something. Not quite casual sex but not quite lovers either. And when they have to fly to LA for another bloody wedding to collect money from a misbehaving Cosa Nostra associate, both John and Santino have ideas about how to make their own fun at a wedding. 
> 
> Unfortunately for the wedding, they're quite creative with sharp objects.

They get back from Paris, but the night in Paris doesn’t vanish as the city vanishes from sight. Instead, it stretches into the langorous reality of weeks and he and Santino fall into...something. Not quite casual sex but not quite lovers either.

Santino still sleeps with other men in his apartment in Rome and John joins the occasional man or woman in their apartments, though not that frequently. For one thing, John doesn’t actually have that much free time, and for another, it’s rather difficult to focus on the gentleness of other lovers when Santino fucks John the same way John fucked him that night in the Continental, albeit with more abandon and creativity once they no longer need to worry about Continental security breaking down the door for fear that they’re conducting business instead of pleasure. Also, John feels an inexplicable urge to shoot something every time Santino takes another man to his bed (specifically, the men’s heads) which is only relieved when he takes Santino to his bed, a reminder that he’s the only man Santino keeps bringing back, the only one allowed at the house and the Rome apartment in equal measure. And the only one who makes Santino’s velvet voice go ripped and raw.

 _How badly did you defile the puppy last night?_ Ares quips upon visiting John’s room one morning to find blood on the sheets and more than one breakable object shattered.

 _There’s something wrong with you_ , he signs back. _And you're welcome_.

Santino has been in a positively foul mood for the past several days in anticipation of their flight to Los Angeles. Nominally to attend Nicky Moscone's daughter's wedding, even though Nicky is several steps lower down the Cosa Nostra food chain than Santino would normally bother to visit in person and it’s approximately a year too early for Santino to be in a good mood about attending another wedding. It's dressed as a compliment to Nicky's daughter even though anyone with a clue knows it isn't. Nicky has been sloppy over the last few months with the Serbians and $100,000 of Santino's money is stalled in transit from the Serbians to Nicky to Santino, problems that Don Barzini can't or won't resolve.

It was entertaining for about five seconds, which is how much of Nicky's wife's shitfit was audible after Santino informed Nicky he’ll attend the wedding personally. Santino has been in a foul mood every second since then, except when John drags him off to be defiled and work out his aggression on someone who enjoys it, to the relief of the entire household.

Ares just looks him up and down and pokes at the scrapes and bruises on his chest, ignoring his glare. _Hell, long as you're into that_. _And he doesn't break your pretty face open._ She keeps poking him to check for broken glass and, finding none, drops the first aid kit in his lap and points to his suitcase. They are, at last, heading to the airport for a fourteen-hour overnight flight to LA. 

Santino appears in John’s doorway about twenty minutes later dressed in black but absent his suit jacket and tie, a pointed _fuck you_ to the sunlight waiting for them in LA. John pulls him inside and closes the door, unbuttoning Santino’s shirt to check the bruises and the places John's knives left red trails behind. “Do those hurt?”

“Pleasantly.” Santino turns him around and checks his back, ripping some of the gauze off and taking a clean supply from the still-open first aid kit on the bed. “You have this in entirely the wrong place.” His fingers are surprisingly gentle as he applies the gauze, but then, Santino is gentlest after they’ve fucked just this side of killing each other. His clever hands are equally capable of bruising and tracing John’s tattoos, as they are now. Arms snake around his waist and he settles into them, feeling Santino’s warmth seep into him.

Santino sighs, resting his forehead against the back of John’s neck. “This will be tedious.”

“Weddings often are.”

Santino snorts. “The wedding too. Knowing Heather, her lack of taste will be enough to give me a migraine.”

They’re almost domestic like this. Almost normal. And it keeps throwing John off from figuring out what they’re doing with each other. “It doesn’t need to be.”

He feels Santino smile at his back. “What do you have in mind?”

He reaches a hand back to trace along Santino’s hip. He’s not sure what they’re doing here in a broader sense, but the minutiae are clear. "Making business a bit more pleasurable."

Santino smiles wider, opening his mouth to rest his teeth against John’s shoulder. “You have _excellent_ ideas of fun.” He sinks his teeth hard into the muscle and lets go to work over the spot with his tongue. And when John turns around in Santino’s arms, he’s rewarded with a kiss with tongue before Santino breaks away with a smirk. “Get dressed. We have a plane to catch.”

Santino might hate the LA sun, but he is positively distracting in it. Distracting enough for a man in the airport to run into a pole while staring at him. Santino laughs with all his teeth, and John hides his satisfaction at the man’s embarrassment by climbing into the car after Santino. He does catch a glimpse of the man’s disappointment at seeing John climb in the car, though.

They have rooms at the Los Angeles Continental, but they won’t be staying there. Not for most of the trip, anyway. After all, the Continental does not allow business to be conducted on its grounds, and this is a business trip. So instead, Vito Corleone opened his property outside the city for their use, along with the household staff. Including a small army of security to supplement the small army of security Santino brought with him.

“If I die,” Sameen grumbles, “it’ll be because I suffocated on all the testosterone.”

“Not all the dons have such good taste,” Santino replies, gliding into the house to greet the household staff.

Still, for all Sameen and Ares’s grumbling, the added security is a relief. Not being on Continental grounds leaves Santino vulnerable, which is both a slap in Nicky’s face by saying he doesn’t need to hide in the Continental and a taunt for whoever stole Santino’s money. It also means none of them can afford to sleep easy, but then again, it's one way to make the wedding less tedious. Besides, the bed in Santino's room looks rather promising.

By the time they finish preparations in Vito’s house to appear on the Moscones’ doorstep, it’s late afternoon, and Heather opens the door to find Santino on her doorstep folding his sunglasses and looking like the king himself.

Heather's smile is as fake as the blonde in her hair. "Santino, darling. You're early. By two days.”

Santino's smile is blinding. "Afraid I couldn't stay away."

“Business?”

As if Santino would tolerate the Moscones for anything else. “Of course.”

They kiss each other on either cheek, radiating enough pointed good cheer to knock teeth loose. "Nicky and the happy couple are on the back terrace, I'll take you there."

"Ah, sorry," Sameen smiles at Heather as though she can't see Heather's annoyance at being addressed by the help. "Do you have a little girls' room? Long drive."

Heather's smile gets marginally sharper. "Turn left, fourth door down." Sameen trots off looking entirely too pleased with irritating Heather. John suspects that's why Heather looks him and Ares up and down, though her look at John is much more appreciative. "You know you don't need the entourage, Santino. You're always welcome here."

"Occupational hazard," Santino replies, with a hint of possessiveness only John can hear. It's not that Santino hates LA, per se. It's that Santino feels about LA the same way he feels about the Moscones, which is to say he thinks Nicky is an ape who has no business giving orders on behalf of Don Barzini and he thinks Heather is irredeemably gauche and even more irredeemably rude, especially with regards to the people who work for her.

Ares skates her hands across anything in reach as they walk, ignoring Heather's glare. The house is a fortress with entirely too much new money on display. John's eyes skim over the gold and designer furniture thinking of Santino's estate, all subdued, rich earth tones and priceless art and tall windows and frescos older than the United States. Compared to Santino's estate, the Moscone home is a toothache. Much like the Moscones themselves.

Ares catches his arm before he can follow Santino out onto the terrace. _I'm off to cause trouble._

 _Don't get caught_ , he signs back. It’s really a good thing not a single damn person in the Moscone household ever bothered to learn sign language. Otherwise, none of them would be able to make snarky side commentary and they’d all be bored enough for assault with a martini shaker.

 _Don't let Santino convince you to shoot anyone_ , she retorts as she backs up, smirking before turning on her heel to stride back into the house.

Surprisingly, their absence has been noted, because everyone on the terrace is looking at him when he steps out into the light. He finds out why when Maria’s fiancé from Oklahoma—Andrew, maybe—smiles at him and glances between John and Santino, asking, "And who's this?" in a voice that says he's hilariously ill-prepared for the yellow brick road he's standing in.

"Santino's bodyguard, don't mind him," Heather says, talking over Santino. The smile on Santino's face says he'd rather like to take the olive spear out of her martini and spear her eye out with it. "I'll leave you all to it. Wedding to prepare for."

Andrew still glances between Santino and John when Heather vanishes back into the house to shout at her underlings. Sometimes, the stupidest sheep are stupid enough for flashes of insight. Fortunately, no one believes the stupid sheep. 

Maria, though, just looks at Santino. “I’m so glad you could make it all this way.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Santino says warmly, his charm on full blast. Both to draw Maria in and annoy Nicky—Maria knows Santino has pretty blue eyes and pretty dark curls, but her father knows Santino is gay, a fact that has never once stopped irking him. 

“Where are you in from?” Andrew asks.

“Rome.”

“Oh really?” Andrew grins down at Maria. “We studied abroad there for a semester.”

John knows Santino, which means he can read into Santino’s smile precisely how quaint he finds that sentence. “Did you now?”

“Princess, how about you give us a few minutes?” Nicky says, his smile saying how fond he is of Maria and how fond he isn’t of Santino. “Santino and I have a few things to talk about.”

Maria’s face falls. “You promised no work, Dad.”

 _Then he should have cleaned up with the Serbians_. “We won’t be long, Princess. Promise.”

Santino’s smile when she turns to him is at full wattage. He likes Maria marginally more than he likes Heather and Nicky, which is to say he thinks she’s irritating and vaguely endearing in the way that mob daughters who fawn after him because they don’t know he’s gay are irritating and vaguely endearing insofar as they're pathetically easy to manipulate. 

Maria hugs Santino lightly and Nicky shoos the happy couple back inside, closing the door behind them. He turns back to see Santino seated on one of the terrace chairs like a spoiled cat.

“I offered him ten grand to skip town,” Nicky tells them irritably.

“Did you now?” Santino says, equally irritably.

“He wouldn’t take it. Says he loves her.”

“How quaint,” Santino replies. “And how fortunate for you, considering that you’re short $100,000 of my money and don’t have a spare nickel to bribe him with.”

“It’s the damn Serbians,” Nicky grumbles. “They didn’t pay up.”

“$100,000 is more than a lost tip,” Santino replies, his eyes sharp enough to gut. “And it’s your job to make sure the Serbians pay.”

"I've got my daughter's wedding, don't I? I don't need the feds breathing down my neck on her big day."

"You tried to bribe the groom with $10,000 you don't have," Santino retorts, a razor's edge in his voice. "And if you hadn't been sloppy, you wouldn't need to worry about the feds."

Nicky seems to realize his mistake and sets down his drink, though he's not nearly cowed enough. "You don't need to worry about the feds."

"I know I don't." Santino tilts his head forward, staring at Nicky with blue eyes to drown in. "But you need to be very worried about me."

"You'll have your money."

"When?"

"Soon."

"Soon doesn't have a calendar date, Nicola, and you're two months short on payment."

"Take it up with the Serbians," Nicky snaps.

"I will. But right now, I'm taking it up with you, since it's your job to collect payment."

"I'll get you your money in the next few days."

"I'll have my money by your daughter's wedding day, whether you hand it to me or I get it myself." Santino unfolds from his seat and looks down his nose at Nicky. "You won't like it if I have to get it myself."

Nicky sighs. "By Maria's wedding."

"By Maria's wedding." Santino starts to walk off the terrace, then turns and looks over his shoulder. "And Nicola?"

Nicky stares at him disgruntled and waits.

"I meant what I said. You won't like what happens if I have to get it myself. Or rather," he turns back around to fix dead eyes on Nicky, "your daughter and her darling fiancé won't like what happens on her big day, and the rest of the wedding party won't either. Do I make myself clear?"

Nicky looks uneasy, but not uneasy enough, given the sentences that just came out of Santino's mouth. "You'll get your money."

"I know." Santino turns on his heel and strides back into the house to the sound of Heather in the living room, shouting at Sameen and Ares for wandering.

"You blind on top of being deaf?" Heather snaps at Ares. "You don't wander around my house, you—"

"Heather," Santino says, low and pleasant as a dangling knife. "It's no business of mine how you treat your employees, but if you speak to mine like that again, I will be very put out."

If looks could kill, Heather would have eviscerated Santino by now. "Then tell your help not to wander around my house."

"Are they not allowed to use the facilities, either?" Santino replies evenly. "I'm sure they simply got lost in the forest of gold leaf. Ares, Sameen, we're leaving."

Heather's face says they're leaving not a moment too soon.

 _Did you plant the bugs?_ Santino signs to Ares as they walk to the car.

_Like a termite infestation._

The bugs reveal one obvious thing and one less obvious thing. The obvious thing is that Heather and Nicky hate each other. The less obvious thing is that they're very nervous about Santino showing up in person with his favorite killers in tow to collect his money, though they seem to be nervous for different reasons.

 _Why do they all have to be hard?_ Ares signs, glaring at the bugs.

"The Moscones are involved," Santino mutters. "Ares, keep an ear on the bugs and get in their systems. Sameen, take guards and camp out to watch the Moscones. If the Serbians did pay, then I want to know where the Moscones have the money."

Sameen deflates. "But the _in-laws_ just got there. From _Oklahoma_."

Santino raises an eyebrow. Sameen sighs and grabs her gear, grumbling something deeply uncomplimentary about the Midwest.

They meet with the Serbians the following day in the Continental, because the Serbians don't work for Santino and are thus less nervous about showing how irate they are at being accused of withholding payment. Still, Sergei and Ivan aren't stupid enough to try something on Continental grounds, so John runs errands while Santino meets with them—the tailor for a suit, the sommelier for a fresh stock, the help desk for blueprints of the Moscone house and Sergei and Ivan's home.

The Serbians are adamant they paid and frankly offended by the suggestion they may not have. They get back to Vito's house in time for one of the security team to drag them into the room with Ares and the listening equipment, where Sergei is arguing with Nicky with impressive gusto.

 _For a guy whose first language isn't English, that was a creative insult_ , Ares signs.

"Can I shoot them now?" Sameen says, from Ares's phone on Skype.

"No," Santino replies.

" _Oklahoma_ , boss."

"At the rate they're going, you'll get the chance soon. Any sign of the money?"

"No...hey, wait a second." Sameen drops the phone and they hear her camera clicking. "There's no money in it, but Heather's got a suitcase."

Santino sighs. "They're traveling after the wedding, Sameen. There are as many suitcases in that house as there are Botox injections."

"Unless Heather's joining the newlyweds for the weirdest threesome ever, she's got no reason to have a suitcase. And she just hid the bag from Nicky."

Ares pokes John, pointing to her screen and signing, _Heather's booked a flight to the Caymans the night of the wedding. Nicky doesn't have a ticket_.

They hear Sergei slamming out of the house, and John looks up to find Santino studying the screen with an irritated expression that bodes poorly for the health of the Moscones and the Serbians. "Sergei was lying."

 _He has no reason to lie to Nicky in his own house. He doesn't know we're listening_.

Santino shakes his head, seeming even more irritated. "He was lying at the Continental. It must not have been about the money, but he was lying about something." And Santino gets very, _very_ displeased when people lie to him. "Sameen. Leave the crew to watch the house and find out what Sergei's trying to hide."

" _Finally,_ something fun."

"Don't kill him or Ivan until we know where the money is, and don't trash Vito's car. I'm already out $100,000 for this trip, I don't need to make up your damages to Vito in a chop shop."

"I'll steal the fees from the Serbians."

Santino sighs. "If you must, make sure you steal enough. And don't start a war."

John has absolute confidence in Sameen's ability to smash her way into what's going on. Vito's car stands about a 50/50 chance, though.

"What do you think's going on?" he asks later that night, in Santino's room. The bed is as promising as it looks, but they don't do much more than kiss and bite. For one thing, the early summer heat is intolerable, and for another, they're not in the Continental, which means it's a bad idea to be in any position that would terribly impede John from killing someone. So instead he's laid out on his back with Santino straddling him and a first aid kit next to his ribcage so that Santino can check his bruises and clean the minor open wounds his teeth left before their flight, watching Santino at work.

"An endless pain in my side." In cleaning injuries, as in playing cards and playing music, Santino has the delicate touch of an artist.

John reaches up to run a hand up Santino's side. There are healing cuts there, shallow and largely scabbed over and unlikely to slow Santino down much if someone hit him. "Guess I got them started."

"You," Santino replies, "are a thoroughly enjoyable pain in my ass."

John runs a hand over Santino's ass because it is, in fact, a nice ass. After a moment, Santino sits back and rolls off, letting John sit up. He lays on the bed and watches John pull on a shirt with regret, then with interest as John hides weapons throughout the room. "You could kill both of the guards outside with a pencil."

He could. It probably doesn't reassure the guards outside to be reminded of that fact. "Pencil is a disadvantage against a gun," he replies, locking the balcony with a crowbar and pulling the curtains shut to block any view inside.

Santino snorts. "You killed three men in a bar in one night with a pencil and all of them had guns." Which doesn't reassure the guards at all, if the shuffling is anything to go by. "Besides, there are enough guns hidden around the house to outfit the entire Marine Corps."

It's the reason it took them until late afternoon to finish setting up the house. Ares wanted to put DET around the perimeter, but Santino drew the line in the interest of leaving enough of Vito's house standing for a dinner reservation crew to repair. "Less chance of you getting shot, then," John retorts, ducking his head outside to tell the guards to spread out down the hall. If someone comes for Santino, they want to force them to come through the house and sound the alarm long before making it to Santino, thus waking up the most dangerous thing in the house.

He leaves the door ajar and sits on the bed to check the ammunition in a Kimbler Warrior and tuck it under his pillow. One of his German varietals is under Santino's pillow, and a throwing knife within Santino's reach.

Arms around John's waist and pulls him back into Santino. He settles with his back to Santino's chest feeling a nose pressed into his neck, hands holding his shirt. It's soothing, being in Santino's arms where it doesn't entirely matter what they're doing here, exactly, so long as Santino keeps holding on and John keeps staying to be held.

It doesn't last, of course.

And when it doesn't last, John wakes up to the click of a safety and reaches under his pillow to draw his gun and fire in that direction on instinct, the same time that a bullet hits the wall three feet above Santino. When he's awake enough to process that he's been woken up by the Butcher of Kiev staring him down with a Glock, he's already launched across the room and into the hall to tear after the Butcher, snarling at the guards to stay with Santino.

Ares rockets up to the Butcher and throws a punch to slow him down, which is all John needs to throw his body weight forward, sending himself and the Butcher tumbling down the stairs.

They crash to the floor to the sound of guards shouting and both of their guns flying across the floor. John manages to roll over and pull his knees in before the Butcher is on him, kicking hard into center mass to wind him, then knock him backward, buying just enough time to roll forward and launch himself at the Butcher to crash into a bookcase in a shower of shattering glass.

A knee hits him in the stomach and a heavy bookend hits his back, which loosens his grip just enough for the Butcher to throw him across the floor and through the coffee table. A gunshot rings out and hits the bookcase, then another shattering a glass bowl near the Butcher's shoulder—a guard in the hall, who is rewarded with a vase thrown at his face for his trouble. John pulls himself back to grab the nearest available solid object, a small statue head on the bookshelf, and heaves it at the Butcher, instead shattering the statue against the wall as the Butcher bolts for the kitchen, trying to make for the glass doors to the backyard.

Instead, the Butcher runs into another guard swinging a pan at his head. He has the wherewithal to block it with his forearm, which sounds painful but buys him time to break a bowl over the guard's head and send him reeling.

Unfortunately for the Butcher, it also keeps him standing still long enough for John to grab a handgun tucked behind the toaster and shoot the back of his knee, lunging to cover the space between them and hit him in the back of the head with the butt of the gun. He hits the floor like a sack of potatoes, dropping with a shout when John's foot slams into his back.

"Stay there," John snarls. The Butcher freezes. "Hands up and turn over."

The Butcher holds his hands near his head and turns over to find John's gun fixed on his forehead and four guards appearing out of the woodwork with their guns trained on him.

“Morning, Francis.”

“Morning, John.”

“You look good. You lost weight?”

“Sixty pounds.”

“That’s impressive. Who hired you?”

“The Moscones.”

“Which one?”

“Both. Separately.”

John raises an eyebrow. “To kill Santino?”

Francis snorts. “To try.” He shrugs. “I had a day off.”

“You already had your try.”

“I did.” Francis doesn’t sound at all sorry about wasting it. “Now I’m warning you about Nicky and Heather.”

“Much obliged. How about you enjoy the rest of your day off?”

Francis nods, wincing as he moves his knee. “Much obliged.”

John lets Francis pull himself upright keeping his gun on Francis's head, Santino’s bodyguards surrounding him as he stands. “Take care of yourself, Francis. And send my best to the missus and the kids."

“Will do. Have fun at the wedding.”

John keeps his gun trained on Francis as the bodyguards escort him limping out of the house, waiting until Francis’s car has pulled away to lower his gun and go back in the house, dialing Sameen as he steps into the living room where Ares and Santino wait, stepping around broken glass that the housekeeping staff is trying to sweep up.

After three rings, someone picks up that is definitely not Sameen, on account of being male, Serbian, and very confused. "...hello?"

"Put Miss Shaw on."

Apparently, that doesn't clear up any confusion. "Who the hell is this?"

"It's not a request," he replies in Serbian.

There's a pause, then Sameen snapping into the phone. "What? These morons were telling me everything."

"Stop playing with your food. The Moscones hired the Butcher of Kiev."

Sameen sighs. "Let me put you on hold." Sameen's hold music starts a second later—breaking bones, screaming, a crash, three gunshots, the phone clattering across the floor, a string of inventive Serbian curses, and a few indistinguishable Serbian sentences followed by another gunshot. After a moment, Sameen picks up. "I know where the money is."

"Good. Where?”

“Heather has it. Nicky stole from Santino to make it look like the Serbians never paid so Santino would take of Heather's Serbian lover boy for him. Heather’s going to pack it in a suitcase and run off with her Serbian lover boy and let Santino kill Nicky for her."

How very cliche of Heather. “Who’s her Serbian lover boy?”

“Sergei. She’s going to make for the airport after the wedding.”

How very stupid of Heather. “Were you tied to a chair?"

"Not relevant."

"Get supplies from the Serbians and get back here to make yourself presentable. We've got a wedding to attend."

"But it's no _fun_ to be presentable at a wedding."

“We make our own fun.”

He hangs up to see Santino’s eyes glittering dangerously. “What kind of fun are we making?”

“Nicky stole your money to make you kill Sergei for him. Heather’s going to steal it from him and run into the sunset with Sergei after the wedding to make you kill Nicky for stealing your money.”

“Who hired the Butcher?”

“Both of the Moscones. Separately.”

Santino's lip curls. "Did they honestly think it would work?"

Honestly, the suggestion is more offensive than anything the Moscones have done in the last two days. "Heather might have. Nicky probably just hoped you'd be angry enough to kill Heather too."

Santino considers that for a moment, then picks up a paperweight shaped like a falcon and heaves it at John’s head. John snatches it out of the air, raising an eyebrow. 

For a moment they stare at each other. Then Santino snarls, “I want to hear that fucker scream from twenty miles away.”

John throws the falcon hard enough to bury it headfirst in the wall next to Santino’s neck. Santino inspects the falcon with vague interest and looks up with much less vague interest to find John an inch from his face.

For a moment they stare at each other. Then John smiles. “You’ll hear him from thirty.”

Santino runs his nose up John’s jaw and bites him under his ear. “Don't make promises unless you intend to follow through,” he breathes in John’s ear, then leans back against the wall with a smirk.

John leans back enough to see Ares signing. _Kinky._ He flips her off, ignoring her silent cackling.

“Turns out this wedding is less tedious than promised,” Santino purrs, stepping around John and dragging fingernails across his chest on his way. “Get dressed to kill, Baba Yaga.”

 _And change out of your pajamas_ , Ares signs, still cackling.

Sameen peels in an hour later looking entirely too pleased with herself. Vito's car is miraculously unscathed, as are the contents of the trunk, which she brandishes on her way to change into a clean suit. "Anyone for Serbian takeout?"

"How badly did you piss off the Serbians?" John asks, checking the contents of the bag.

“They’ll behave at the wedding, but they won’t be happy about it,” Sameen calls over her shoulder.

"Good girl," Santino replies. Where John, Ares, and Sameen are all in black, the better to be shadows at Santino's back, Santino is dressed to mesmerize, a show of the Continental tailor's talents. A black shirt and black waistcoat, a navy suit with black lapels, and an almost-black navy tie cut through with silvery blue that makes his eyes shine like mirrors in the California sun. It drips of taste and will make Santino impossible to look away from, an unsubtle reminder to every one of the business partners of who owns the Moscones and Don Barzini.

More importantly, it will clash _mightily_ with the pastels and spit in the face of the light-color dress code requested on the invitation, which has the fringe benefit of pissing Heather off.

"Dressed to kill?" John says, loading another gun and handing it to Ares as Sameen reappears tucking her comm out of sight in her ear.

Santino smiles. "Let's go to the wedding."

The suits do indeed piss Heather off. As does seeing Santino alive. The look on Santino's face says the grit-toothed smile he gets makes the suits worth every pretty penny they cost him, and that he fully intends to make Heather and Nicky pay interest for the morning's rude awakening.

"Having a restful vacation, Santino?" Heather says, looking a bit like she wants to strangle him with the flowers.

"Slept like a baby," he replies, kissing her on either cheek. "The place looks beautiful."

The place looks like it's been attacked by a flower distribution warehouse specializing solely in pink roses. Then there's the pastel pink silk and the overabundance of gold. Santino draws eyes with the gravitational pull of a black hole, leaving him more than able to work the room where Heather, Nicky, and Sergei couldn't lose sight of him if it was a concerted effort.

Fortunately, they've been casing and bugging the place for days, so they already knew the security and serving staff would be in black. They don't blend into the pastels, but they certainly blend in with the army of security at the periphery and the constant ebb and flow of staff to and from the house, which is precisely what they wanted.

But Santino wants to make a point, and they can't get to work too early without alerting the Moscones or the Serbians of the game, even with Santino's security boys discreetly circulating through the house to keep them updated on the location of everything and everyone. So instead, they have to sit through the wedding.

The entire wedding. And at least half of the reception.

It's really a good thing not a single damn person in the Moscone household understands sign language. Also that both John and Sameen have excellent poker faces. As the ceremony ends and the wedding wears on, though, they're bored enough to stop answering Ares in sign language.

Sameen stares at the bridesmaids with the distant disgust of one staring at a hairy spider. “If I ever decide to get married in pink taffeta and rosettes, stab me.”

 _Why_ , Ares signs, _the taffeta giving you ideas?_

“Baby, I don’t even have a ring yet.”

_So? You know a con artist. I know a jeweler. Met Gala’s coming up. Let’s go shopping._

Sameen looks Ares up and down. “McNally Solitare?”

_You strike me as a Toussaint girl._

“The Toussaint is a necklace.”

_What do you think the jeweler is for?_

“Will you both stop flirting and focus?” John snaps, turning back to the crowd.

“Just to because _someone_ can’t mack on his lover boy.”

_What do you think he wants to skin Nicky for?_

Sameen raises her eyebrows and shrugs. “Kinky.” The Oklahoma grandmother looks at her in horror, turning red when Ares wags her eyebrows.

"Look." Finally, _fucking finally_ , Heather is talking to Sergei. "That's our cue. Go get to work." Ares and Sameen glide off and John floats forward to rest a hand on Santino's elbow.

"Pardon me," Santino says, dismissing one of the lesser LA Camorra bosses with his smile in place. When he turns to Heather and Sergei, it's the smile of an apex predator with dinner in view. "Heather, Sergei."

"Sorry, Santino," Heather says, glaring at the staff. "I have to check on the servers, excuse me."

"Of course," he replies pleasantly. "I just need Sergei for a spot of business."

Heather's face tightens in a blink and is gone just as fast. "Don't be too long. It is a wedding, you know. Enjoy yourselves."

"Oh, I plan on it," Santino says, his predator smile fixed on Sergei.

Heather darts away a bit faster, Sameen slipping by her in the crowd and slipping a hand in and out of Heather's purse on the way.

John falls back, just enough to ensure Sergei won't hear him. "Ares, Heather is coming your way. Be quick." He hears two tongue clicks in his ear, Ares acknowledging him, and returns his attention to Santino and Sergei.

"I told you, I don't have your money," Sergei says with a look on his face like they're having a cocktail chat, except he's not half as convincing as Santino.

"I know you don't," Santino says. "I just wanted to let you know I know where the money is."

Sergei blinks. "Oh?"

"Yes," Santino says, his smile blinding, "and I know you paid." He holds out a hand. "Consider this a return to business as usual."

Sergei's smile becomes much more convincing. "Glad to hear it." His phone buzzes and he digs it out of his pocket. "Ah, excuse me. I need to take this."

"Of course."

Sergei slips away, Sameen slipping out of the tent behind him.

Santino and John meet eyes. Santino's lips quirk, the first sign of a real smile all day. _Time to have fun_ , his face says before he slips through the crowd to vanish among the black flow of security staff circulating through the house.

John turns and makes his way through the crowd to where Nicky is holding court and scarring the Oklahoma in-laws. He looks up at the shadow over his shoulder to find John Wick waiting. "Mr. Wick?"

"I don't mean to interrupt," John says, even though he definitely does.

Nicky shakes his head with the confidence and indulgent smile of a man who thinks he's safe. "Don't worry about it. What do you need, Mr. Wick?"

"Santino needs to speak with you."

"Business associate," Nicky says in response to the in-laws' confused looks. This apparently doesn't comfort them. "Now?"

"It won't take long."

"Excuse me," Nicky says to the in-laws, rising from his chair. "I'll be back in a moment." They don't look comforted by that statement either.

"Inside."

"Of course."

They had a contingency plan to get Nicky to wave the guards off once he met Santino, but they don't need it. He waves them off when they step to follow him, and he follows John into the house without blinking. He does pause when John walks to the stairs, though. "Downstairs?"

"Just to avoid disturbing the wedding." And get well away from the army of serving staff.

"Appreciate it." It's a sign of Nicky's arrogance that he follows John down the stairs without question.

He has about three seconds to regret that decision upon stepping off the last stair, which is the amount of time it takes John to whirl around, twist an arm behind his back, and put a hand over his mouth as Ares steps into sight with a gun leveled at him. "Scream and everyone upstairs dies, understood?"

When he hesitates, John tightens his grip in warning of a snapped neck. "Or Ares can shoot your knees out and I can go kill the happy couple. Your choice."

Nicky nods.

"Move." John uses the twisted arm to guide Nicky forward, Ares picking up the bag at her feet to follow them.

Santino is waiting for them in the screening room with a glass of whiskey. The way he studies Nicky as John zip-ties him to a chair is not promising for Nicky's health. "Why are his ribs intact?"

"So he can talk."

"Does he have anything worth saying?"

"Stranger things have happened."

Santino quirks an eyebrow at three long scratches on Ares's face. "What happened to you?"

Ares dumps the bag in front of him louder than she needs to, her movements sharp as she signs. _Heather caught me switching the suitcases. Bitch tried to claw me_.

"How terribly rude of Mrs. Moscone." Santino kneels to unzip the bag, glancing up at Ares. "Did you make the switch?"

 _Obviously_. Sure enough, the bag is full of Santino's money.

"It's your lucky day, Nicola." Santino stands and shoves away the bag with his foot.

"How the fuck is this my lucky day?" Nicky spits.

Santino's face says Nicky has entirely too much sass for someone zip-tied to a chair. "Because if your wife had succeeded in stealing from me, I would have skinned your princess and her precious new bumpkin husband too."

Nicky goes white.

"Fortunately for the newlyweds, your wife isn't a very talented thief. So the newlyweds get to go over the rainbow to Oklahoma and your wife gets to be stopped at the airport with a suitcase full of Serbian heroin. Now," he picks up the whiskey and swirls it, clinking the ice, "while I appreciate your ingenuity in attempting to kill each other, I am rather irritated by the attempted robbery. And both of you hiring the Butcher of Kiev to get me to kill one of you while the other made off with my money?" He clicks his tongue, shaking his head as if in disappointment with an irritating child. "Terribly sloppy. And you couldn't afford to be sloppy, Nicola, not after the mess you made with the Serbians."

"Listen to me." Nicky looks between Santino and John as John pulls on gloves, as if John could do anything to stop this. As if John would do anything to stop this.

"Why?"

"I can help you clean up with the Serbians."

"Do I look like I need your help with the Serbians?" Santino replies coolly.

"I can make up the money. Double it."

"Don't beg, Nicola. It's embarrassing." Santino is inspecting him like a bug for dissection. "Don Barzini might have been willing to tolerate this, and I might have been willing to let him as long as you didn't cause trouble. But you didn't steal from Barzini. You stole from me."

"Hey!" Nicky's voice cracks as he shouts. "Hey! In here!"

"Why are you shouting?" Santino says, holding his arms out to the room. "The room is soundproofed and the DJ is blasting something that vaguely resembles music. No one can hear you."

"They'll come looking for me."

"Why would they?" Santino nods to John. "You bowed out saying you had business to attend and were arrogant enough to go around your own home with visitors and no bodyguards. That gives us, oh," he shakes his sleeve to glance at his watch, "about twenty minutes conservatively, before anyone starts wondering where you've gone. Ares, take the bag to the car and check how Sameen's doing."

Ares smirks. _See you in hell, fucker_.

"The hell is she saying?" Nicky snaps.

Ares flips him off over her shoulder, grabbing the bag and pulling the door shut behind her.

Santino strolls up to John and kisses him slow and deep in front of Moscone. That finally gets Nicky to sit still, from utter confusion if nothing else.

John comes up for air to rest his forehead against Santino’s, his mind quieting and settling with the promise of a task. Focusing on Santino, too, who’s standing in the middle of the task with him, anchoring him in the fish tank quiet of the screening room. “I told you this wedding didn’t need to be tedious.”

When Santino laughs, John skates his teeth along the fragile part of his neck to kiss his jaw. “I do love your idea of fun.”

John nips above Santino’s pulse, feeling his world narrow to his own drumbeat heart. One beat Santino, the next what waits for Nicky Moscone. "Nineteen minutes and counting."

“Plenty of time for fun,” Santino purrs. “So what kind of fun are we having?”

John reaches into his jacket and withdraws a knife, holding it out where Santino can see it glittering in the light. 

He's hauled back by a handful of hair just long enough to see Santino’s smile before Santino kisses him, the hand in his hair letting go to caress his face so Santino can breathe into the ear without the comm in it, only for John to hear. "One scream from him for every scream I'll get from you. So show me how creative you can be in nineteen minutes, and make every minute count." Santino steps back and settles into one of the seats, sipping his whiskey.

John turns to Nicky. He’s not normally given to taking his time, but then, he’s normally working his way through a crowd, and he normally doesn’t have a captive audience. And Santino is captivated, watching John work with his eyes going brighter with every successive time John applies his focus to a new avenue of creativity, watching as if mesmerized, but not out of fear or horror or even the studied indifference Viggo normally used.

Out of delight and dawning hunger, as if John is something magnificent and tantalizing. And so John works, his focus anchored in Santino. 

They emerge from the screening room nineteen minutes later. John leaves the door slightly ajar and wipes the doorknob and light switch before tucking his gloves in his pocket. Sameen raises her eyebrows when they reappear at the party. "You look like you didn't have nearly enough fun for twenty minutes."

Santino just smirks, depositing his glass on a table on his way to catch the bride and groom. "Maria, darling, the wedding was beautiful."

She and Andrew pause dancing. "You're leaving?"

"Afraid so. Terribly long flight in the morning." They fly the morning after next, which is entirely beside the point.

Maria hugs him lightly, beaming and emanating happiness. "Thanks for coming."

"I wouldn't miss it." He holds out his hand to Andrew, who shakes it graciously. "Congratulations. And take good care of her."

It really is a sign that Andrew has no damn clue whom he's talking to that he responds to that sentence with a smile. "I'll do my best." His eyes flick to John. "Enjoy your evening." Sometimes the stupid sheep are stupid enough to see what's right in front of them.

Santino's smile as he takes John's elbow says that he _always_ enjoys his evening.

Sameen and Ares are giddy in the car. Apparently, they also have every intention of enjoying their evening. And when they get back to Vito's house and Santino dismisses the staff, ordering Sameen and Ares to check into the Continental and take the rest of the night off, it becomes clear that Santino has every intention of letting them.

Elsewhere.

Sameen emerges with her bag in hand and a curious look around the house. Apparently, she was too delighted with Serbian takeout to notice it earlier. "The hell happened here?"

Ares just points to John, which apparently explains everything.

They're almost out the door when Sameen pauses and turns back around to squint at the falcon still buried in the wall of the living room. “Hey, isn’t that the bird from the Bogart movie?”

“No.”

Sameen grunts as she pulls it free, holding it up with a skeptical eye. The bird is decidedly cracked and looks a bit brain dead.

“It’s one of the plaster duplicates. Vito keeps it to creep people out with the curse story. The real one is in Santino's library.” It stares down people who come to do business, along with a painting of Saint Sebastian, because Santino is utterly incorrigible.

“Well thank God. If you trashed the most famous movie prop of all time because Santino wanted to get up to the weird shit, Vito would actually kill you.”

There’s a hand at John’s collar and Santino giving Sameen and Ares a look clearly translating as _get the fuck out._ "Stop gossiping and go check into the Continental.”

“You want a dinner reservation?”

“Later,” Santino purrs, pulling John with him by his tie. “We have weird shit to attend to. Take the boys with you and empty the trunk before you go."

Ares snickers behind him.

John ignores them. Because Nicky Moscone screamed _a lot._ Sergei has yet to start screaming, on account of being duct-taped in the trunk, but the look on his face when the boys dump him at Santino's feet is promising. The look on Santino’s face, the one that says John is something tantalizing and magnificent, is even more promising.

Sameen and Ares appear at breakfast that morning looking thoroughly refreshed and thoroughly laid. Santino gives them the day off on orders not to get caught breaking any laws and rejoin them that evening at Club Hel, setting car keys next to John's coffee. Apparently, they belong to a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS on loan from Vito, which is grand fun to fly up the open highway with and even more fun to drift in an empty airfield. More fun still for the laughter he tears out of Santino with every burst of speed and swooping turn, the sharp glint of California sunlight shining in his teeth and sunglasses.

Santino is still glowing with the sun that night at Club Hel, the red lights catching the red accents in his suit and making his blue eyes bright as molten glass. Sameen and Ares are still radiating contentment from a day in the sand and the fun of strolling into the club and up to the VIP room on the second floor wearing an arsenal concealed by black leather and silver rings made for breaking jaws.

Sergei’s brother, Ivan, is not at all amused by Sameen shooting him the day of the wedding. He's even less amused when Santino hands him Sergei’s heart in a box. Still, it gets the point across. It helps that he seems entirely content to blame Heather for his brother being gutted, and he agrees to swallow the brief investigation that will result from Heather getting arrested with Serbian heroin in exchange for dealing with Heather in police custody as he sees fit. And so, they all agree to consider Santino’s visit as a bit of belated spring cleaning and return to business as usual.

His entourage stares at John the entire time looking green around the gills and more than a little twitchy. Apparently, news of Nicky Moscone has already traveled. What's left of him, anyway. Then again, it probably helps that they can still see Sergei’s heart in a box on the table.

Club Hel is still technically a business meeting once the Serbians leave, insofar as they're ensuring Don Barzini gets the entangled LA camorristi and Cosa Nostra back in marching order under Santino's strong hand. Also John's hands, a reminder of the remains of Nicky Moscone that were found in the screening room last night. Which is to say that Santino makes quick work of installing one of his loyalists to take Nicky’s place and handing off Nicky’s business assets with Barzini sitting right there. Barzini is clearly unhappy about losing another branch of his business to one of Santino’s embedded loyalists, but he’s also skating on thin ice with Santino as it is, and he can’t afford to look out of sync with the boss with his new LA manager sitting right there if he doesn’t want said manager to go over his head for everything.

It’s a peculiar dynamic between Santino and Barzini. Barzini grovels enough for the fact of it to be passable, but he’s also a few shades too familiar with Santino, given that Santino is in LA to mop up after him and Santino clearly doesn’t like him very much. Then again, John supposes Barzini has to get his kicks in somewhere, given that the son of his old rival now owns him and the business he spent Santino’s lifetime building. John never quite loses the sense of hitting several wrong notes when watching Santino and Barzini, but in the noise and dimmness of the club surrounded by their own security, John’s the only one keeping a close enough eye on Santino to notice, and Barzini doesn’t linger longer than he needs to, so John shrugs it off. Besides, the dimness and noise of the club don't hide the heat in Santino's eye when he looks John up and down once the business partners are finally gone.

John sidles up to where Santino is sitting like the king in his castle, looking through the glass out onto the dance floor and the bodies below, pressing a drink into his hand. "Having fun?"

"Now I am," Santino purrs, reaching up to catch John's jacket and pull him to sit on the arm of the chair. "But we could be having more fun."

John hums, leaning into the touch. "What do you have in mind?"

Santino turns his head to look up at John, his mouth curling into a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. One hand reaches up to pull John down into him so he can reach an exposed stretch of John's throat, purring into his ear, “Repaying you for the fun of the wedding.”

“Thought you already did.”

“For Nicky and Sergei,” Santino hums, his hand pressing into John’s lapel like he wants to tear it out of his way. “Not for the wedding.” His eyes settle over John’s shoulder at the edge of the room, where Ares and Sameen and the security boys are still heckling each other, riding high. “Something without a captive audience.”

John kisses Santino hard on the mouth, ignoring Sameen wolf-whistling in the background. “Then why are we still here?”

Santino smirks and stands.

Santino is on him the moment the door to the Continental suite closes, pinning him to the wall to kiss and lick and bite. “You were _magnificent_ ,” he says between one kiss and the next bite. “You were _wasted_ on Viggo.”

“You really want to bring up Viggo right now?” John says, when he can breathe.

“You wouldn’t be here if that idiot hadn’t agreed to my game.” When John surges into him, Santino twists his momentum against him to throw them into the bed and straddle John’s hips. “I suppose I owe him.”

“You want to repay me for the wedding,” John growls, tearing at Santino’s shirt, “or do you want to gloat?”

Santino laughs into his mouth. “Who says I can’t do both?” He sits up and sheds his clothes, making sure John has an excellent view. “Besides, thus far things end well for you when I decide to play a game.”

John raises an eyebrow. Which doesn’t stop him from running his hands up Santino’s chest.

“I did say I would repay you for the fun of the wedding,” Santino purrs. “Will you allow me to set the rules?”

John shifts under Santino, trying to find the right friction. Santino stays in the right position but doesn't move, smiling. Taunting. “What do you have in mind?”

Santino leans down over John, scraping his teeth over an artery. “This entire trip you’ve had your will and focus directed at other people. And mesmerizing though it is to watch,” his teeth cut a little harder against bare skin, “I want all of that will and focus on me. So,” he comes up above John’s face, his hands still pinning John’s shoulders, just out of reach, “I’m going to give you as much fun as you gave me. But if you make a sound, I’ll stop.”

That...is not what John expected. It’s also rather cruel, given that Santino’s smile says he has every intention of trying to make John loud enough to be heard from twenty miles away. “ _Yes_.”

Santino’s smile widens. Then he snaps his teeth against John’s throat, hard enough to draw blood to the surface but not enough to break the skin, forcing John to clench his teeth and swallow down a gasp.

Santino does his very best to make John cry out, then moan, then scream, and all John can do is narrow his focus down to the feeling and ride into Santino, swallowing down the sounds that beat against his id. It overwhelms him until he can’t sense anything else, couldn’t focus on anything else if he tried. A scream rips free of him in the climax, his mind whiting out just as Santino follows, and he thinks maybe this is what the high before dying feels like.

He lays there gasping, leaning into Santino, thinking that if he died like this, he could tumble into hell wanting for nothing. And when Santino laughs, he turns in his arms and kisses him, wanting to swallow that sound too, to taste the brightness of Santino’s laughter on his tongue.

Sameen and Ares emerge the next morning looking worse for the wear, apparently to the credit of the beach, a bottle of tequila, and salt. Not enough for Sameen not to make atrocious innuendos where Santino can hear her. They fall asleep on the plane, which is a blessed respite from the two of them having entirely too much fun trying to break the security boys’ straight faces.

On the other hand, it leaves John to his own devices for the better part of fourteen hours. And while he talks idly with Santino about further business waiting for them back in Rome, meeting with the Continentale treasurer to look over freshly minted coins, a negotiation with the 'Ndrangheta, shipments coming in from the Colombians, he keeps thinking of the forest fire the Moscones' marriage became on their own daughter's wedding day. Nicky reduced to little more than bone shards and torn muscle and pooling blood in his own house while his daughter danced with her husband upstairs, Heather awaiting a fate not much brighter once the Serbians get ahold of her, each a product of their loathing for the other and the only way they knew how to handle hatred that deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't judge me for my shameless Panic! At the Disco and Leverage references. 
> 
> Also, for the movie buffs: why yes, that is, in fact, Vito Corleone and Don Emilio Barzini of The Godfather, and yes, that is, in fact, the Maltese Falcon in Vito's house. For those that don't know, the Maltese Falcon is one of the most iconic Hollywood props in history, and there's also a rather extensive mystery/debate as to which Maltese Falcon is the real one (there are apparently six in circulation claiming the honor, and also the real one is supposedly cursed and evil). It's a fascinating read: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/mystery-of-the-maltese-falcon


	6. who is the betrayer? who's the killer in the crowd?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News of Nicky Moscone travels back to Rome ahead of them, John runs into a stranger (or rather, a stranger runs into him), an unwelcome visitor travels to see Santino, and John finds himself in an uncomfortable exploration of the difference between business and pleasure. 
> 
> Or: a parable on why you shouldn't screw where you sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Stefon voice* This chapter has everything! Ex-lovers, current lovers, ex-lovers being dicks about other ex-lovers, blink-and-you-miss-it references to dickish fathers being dickish, poorly negotiated relationships, commentary on the frequent stupidity of modern art, the beginnings of your proper introduction to Caroline and Flora, an unexpected cameo, a sort-of explanation of how the frick Santino came to hold most of the Italian mafia, the shameless use of Google Translate, laughter only outnumbered by disaster gays, and, of course, ANGST! Oh, and psychopathic flaming disaster gays in love being perfect for each other. If they could ever get their shit together, anyway. 
> 
> *throws chapter* *cackles* *runs away screaming*

They arrive in Rome to find that news of Nicky Moscone traveled to the house ahead of them, further embellished by Sameen and Ares and the boys upon their arrival with impressive flourishes regarding what happened to Sergei. The fact that they weren’t there to see it and got it all through hearsay and a hacked camera feed is entirely beside the point. 

This, too, isn’t something John’s used to. He was always alone when he worked for the bratva, which meant he never saw the stories of his work traveling in real-time. Nor did he see the look on their faces when the uglier details of the story sank in, the dawning fear and amazement and horror as their memory weaves these new details into their concept of Baba Yaga.

John’s not generally bothered by what he does, but it does give him pause, seeing how it takes them a full week to settle back down in his presence. Everyone except Cosima, who fist-bumps him and starts coming up with atrocious action hero names, and Doria, who nods and pats his elbow and says simply, “You take care of Santino,” as though what happened to Nicky Moscone is a perfectly logical extension of taking care of Santino. It’s a relief when, at the end of the week, Santino ships him to spend two weeks out of the country in the Riga Kontinentāls, the Sarajevo Kontinentalni, and the Berlin Kontinental with Annie Croy on High Table business. Active work, considering that his job is to help Annie make sure the records and payments at those particular Accounts Receivable branches are up to date, but then again, Santino doesn't send Annie Croy just to be his accountant any more than he sends John just to shake hands. Also, the Kontinentāls treasurer has a shipment of gold coming in for liquidation, the Kontinentalni book balancing involves reminding a few local affiliates of the importance of membership dues, and the Kontinental switchboard is down for repairs.

Annie has a grand time of it and ships him back to Rome with Monet's _San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk_ as a thank you note for the fun, but John returns still feeling out of balance. Apparently he’s not the only one, because Ares responds to his text confirming Santino’s location with _In the apartment with Flora and Caroline. Go to Sant’ Eustachio Il Caffè and get something for them. He’s in a mood._

“Sounds like we’re detouring to Sant’ Eustachio Il Caffè,” he tells Matteo, who breathes a sigh of relief as he reroutes through early morning traffic.

“Ares has the best ideas. They only just got up, too, so you’ll have a receptive audience.”

“How bad of a mood is he in?”

Matteo’s face says there’s a reason John’s going to Sant’ Eustachio Il Caffè. John wonders who fucked up and how badly for Santino to be in that kind of a mood after only just getting up.

It’s just early enough that there’s not much of a line, so he tells Matteo to loop the block rather than try to park. It’s not quite early enough that it’s not busy though, so he has to duck and weave when he hears his order called, preoccupied by trying to keep the coffee and the pastry bag above the fray.

Also, he’s still a bit off-balance and has been speaking English to Annie Croy for two weeks, so when a woman runs headlong into him and dumps her coffee all over him in the process, _fuck_ slips off his tongue instead of _cazzo_. Not enough off-balance to dump the coffee and pastry bag in the process, but enough to be disoriented hearing himself curse in English.

“I’m so sorry!” the woman says in English, turning about as red as her jacket and tripping a bit over her English in the process.

“It’s fine,” John says, checking the coffee and pastries and, reassured that they’re fine, takes the chance to set them on the counter before further catastrophe plows into him.

“No, it’s—shit.” The woman reaches around him to grab a handful of napkins. “It’s all over your shirt, I’m so sorry.” Only to falter once she has the napkins and somehow turn redder, like her mind caught up to her hand and realized it would be extremely awkward to pat down a stranger in the middle of a cafe.

John shakes his head and flags the barista. “No, it’s alright. Needed to wash the plane off anyway. What did you have?”

“You really don’t have to do that. I was the one who ran into you.”

“I was the one who was in your way. And you look like you’re en route to work in a hurry, so,” he nods to the barista, “what did you have?”

“I should be the one doing that for you.”

He taps the coffee and pastry bag, intact and unharmed. “No harm, no foul. It’s no problem.”

“Next time I run into you, I’ll owe you coffee, then.” Her mind catches up to her tongue a second too late, and when it does, she facepalms. “Jesus Christ. I don’t always run into strangers with coffee, I swear.”

He’s been in here just long enough that Matteo will probably loop back any minute, and he probably shouldn’t delay too long, given that cold coffee makes poor peace offerings. “Listen, it’s no problem. I was in your way, so just let me get you a fresh cup and we can all carry on our morning.”

She repeats her order to the barista, who produces it in short order just as Matteo pulls up in front. “Sorry again.”

“Like I said, it’s no problem.” He picks up his order and gives her what he hopes is a friendly smile, just enough to be on his way. “Have a nice morning.”

“You too.” She’s still as red as her jacket when he turns around.

Matteo is waiting, and by the look on his face, John looks like a mess. “What happened to you?”

“Ran into someone,” John replies, handing over the coffee and pastry bag so he can climb in the passenger seat.

“...we need a reservation, or…?”

It’s not reassuring to discover that’s Matteo’s first assumption. Then again, it’s probably fair. “Literally ran into someone. Or, she ran into me. Spilled coffee all over me.”

Matteo winces. “You alright? I can get your bag out of the trunk. Might be burn cream in the glove box if you need.”

“Just drive.” It is still barely seven in the morning, or so the dashboard tells him, which is entirely too early to change clothes not in the relative comfort of his sort of home. Besides, they aren’t that far from the apartment now, and lo and behold, they’re pulling through the building gate into the courtyard in no time at all, the car parked under the shade of orange trees. Matteo offers to take John’s bag so he can carry the coffee and pastries upstairs with both hands, given that there’s a better chance all of them will survive the trek up seven flights of stairs and, in any case, Santino will probably be more receptive to them if John’s the one handing them over.

John prefers the house to the apartment mostly because of the lack of a specific type of visitor. That aside, he does like the apartment more—it feels more like it belongs to Santino alone. Unlike the house, which wears its age in the very air, the apartment carries its age in its bones, in the dark Umbrian tiles and the exposed beams of the ceiling. What few heirlooms are in the apartment are all relics of Santino’s mother, salvaged and jealously guarded by Santino and Flora after her death—the plain wood Max Ernst chess set on the coffee table in the second-floor sitting room, the armload of Beethoven and brass band jazz records taking up a whole row of the bookshelf under the record player looking on the waiting chess match, the Van Gogh letter sketch of an empty bird’s nest with a single lonely egg balanced in a craggy, gnarled hand of a tree branch in the master bedroom across from the malachite jewelry box on the nightstand Santino uses for watches and cuff links. And unlike the house, which wears colors like every one of them carries a story, the apartment is almost ascetic in the absence of visual noise. Its character bleeds through in tactility—the reclaimed wood of the tables, the glint of the terrace light against the open iron staircase to the second floor, bookshelves filled by leather books soft as butter, a collection of white de Waal vases with the echo of the potter’s hands close enough to feel his thumbprints left behind, an array of Albrecht Durer sketches depicting here the right hand of an apostle, there the hand of God the Father—and its color bleeds through layers of warm neutrals in startlingly soft fabrics set into a backdrop of black and white but for a few memorable punctuations.

The house is permeated with the character of the D’Antonios, and the ostentatiousness of the house certainly suits its current owner, but the apartment is better matched to Santino’s personality.

Still, for all that it takes up the top two floors of the palazzo, it is much smaller than the house, which means it’s a hair claustrophobic when John walks through the front door to find triple the number of security distributed in the front rooms—Santino’s security, chatting amicably with Flora and Caroline’s security. What’s surprising is when he walks into the living room to find Santino, Caroline, and Flora all arrayed there with Sameen and Ares playing cards in the corner with Flora’s primary bodyguards, Mikkel and Astrid. The bottom floor of the apartment works double-duty as a business meeting space and a security buffer floor for the private quarters comprising the top level, which means Santino, Caroline, and Flora often stay in the upper floor when they’re not working. Then again, it’s early enough that the cook has only just started clattering around in the kitchen.

 _Careful_ , Ares signs, nodding to Santino’s turned back as John comes into the room. _He’s in a mood_. Apparently a bad enough mood to warrant a second warning, which would explain why security is hovering in a nervous peanut gallery outside the living room. 

Her movement catches Santino’s eye, though, and he looks up from watching Flora clean her guns to see John. “Well look what the cat dragged in,” he purrs, eyes lighting on the coffee and the pastry bag. “With sacrificial lambs.”

“I was told you’re in a mood,” John replies, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of mood where the direct approach will end in stabbing.

Santino’s eyes travel from the bag to the coffee stains on his shirt. “What happened to you?”

“Someone ran into me.” He holds out his sacrificial lambs. “Coffee’s intact, though.”

“I hope business abroad went smoother than your trip to the cafe.”

A petty mood, then. John raises his eyebrow and continues holding out his offerings. “Annie sent _San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk_ to the house.”

Flora looks up to croon in delight. “Take the nice man’s coffee and stop being an asshole.”

Santino hums, but Annie’s gift was John’s trump card, and sure enough, Santino rolls to stand and take John’s peace offerings out of his hands. “Go change into something that doesn’t have someone else’s coffee all over it.”

That kind of petty mood then. “Maybe I’ll keep it, what with the charming mood you’re in.”

“Weirdo,” Sameen calls, not looking up from smacking a card down under Astrid’s hand.

Santino looks pointedly at John’s mouth, then back up at his eyes. “Go change out of someone else’s coffee and I swear I’ll play nice.”

“You don’t know what that is,” Flora says, turning back to her guns.

“I’ll pour yours down the drain, at the rate you’re going,” Santino replies, smirking at John.

“Only if you want to get shot.”

John pushes the coffee and pastry bag into Santino’s hands and takes his cue to dart up the stairs.

Sure enough, Santino waits for him at the bottom of the stairs when he reappears with a pleased smile that says he has found it in him to play nice. Somewhere in his toes, maybe. He kisses John with feeling from the bottom of his toes too, which he doesn’t usually do with an audience. Sure enough, Sameen wolf-whistles.

“Missed me already?” John murmurs, ignoring Ares gagging in the background.

“Missed you for two weeks,” Santino replies, ignoring Ares gagging louder.

“Aw,” Flora coos, “he is domesticated.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” Santino replies, tugging John to follow him back to the couch.

“I think I’m hilarious.” She even puts a magazine back in one of her robust guns to drive the point.

“Carmine is ten minutes out,” Caroline says out of nowhere. Caroline does that.

“Of course he is.” Santino replies as if he’s not at all surprised, looking not idle enough to hide the edge of annoyance as he drops back into his seat on the couch. Ares looks like she’s debating the merits of smacking Caroline for ruining the vague semblance of a good mood.

“Detoured to see you.” 

“Of course he did.” Santino’s tone says what he thinks of that honor. “For a chat, or a confrontation?” 

Caroline shrugs, still not turning away from her laptop. “He just brought the usual retainers, no more or less armed than usual. Reserved a room in the Continentale for a week.” Suddenly it makes sense why Santino’s on the lower floor.

“With Domenico?” And Santino’s current state of charm suggests why Caroline and Flora are down here with him.

“No.”

It’s stray comments like this that make John suspect the AI Caroline built for the hedge fund might do a bit more than just move money and make sure their clients aren’t twitchy, whether or not Santino is aware of it in so many words. Caroline’s not omniscient by any stretch, but she also tends to know about potential threats heading directly for Santino with a consistency that doesn’t add up, given that (despite all appearances otherwise) she is a human being with limited hours in the day and a rather time-consuming day job. Still, he’s learned not to question its usefulness. “You want me to deal with it?”

Ares looks to Caroline, who shakes her head. _We’ll keep his retainers at the door._

 _“_ And shoot him if he’s an asshole,” Flora mutters, turning her attention back to the gun she’s disassembling while pulling a few more handguns closer. “Which he almost certainly will be.”

“You’re not going to shoot him,” Caroline says flatly.

“Why not?” Flora returns, sounding surprisingly irritated by the prospect.

“Because Domenico keeps ‘Ndrangheta in line when Santino calls him,” Caroline replies, as though this is an argument they’ve had entirely too many times, “and we can’t kill him until we’ve groomed another loyalist to replace him as capo crimine.”

“That’s Domenico, not Carmine.”

“Killing Carmine will piss Domenico off.”

The look on Flora’s face says that’s not at all a good enough reason not to shoot him, which is surprising. Flora’s usually more of a pragmatist about shooting people.

Santino rolls his eyes and nods to the spot on the couch near him. “Sit and drink your coffee. I’m not worried about Carmine.”

He can feel Flora’s radiating annoyance from her seat on the floor, so he pushes her coffee closer to her elbow as he sits. She smiles at him, but it’s tight and tense. “There a reason he’s stopping by this early?”

“To be his usual charming self, I suppose,” Santino mutters darkly. Ah, yes. There’s the mood. Probably not a good thing if Flora’s irritable too.

“Play nice,” Caroline says, starting to type again. It’s a frightening day when Caroline’s the agreeable one.

“What other kind is there with Carmine?”

The look Caroline gives him could wither a man’s soul. Sadly, Santino never had one. The security boys scuttle, though.

Still, Santino stands when the boys alert them that Carmine is here, resting a hand on John’s shoulder to tell him to stay as he passes. Flora catches his pant leg, tells him to play nice and get this over with the fast way, then shoos him into motion, though she makes a point of arranging her guns for effect. Ares and Sameen trot out ahead of him so that Sameen can greet Carmine in her brightest voice possible while she and Ares pat him down none too gently, marginally softened by Santino’s appearance. By the sounds of it, he detoured to the kitchen for coffee, which is something like playing nice, John supposes.

There’s a minor shuffle and Sameen’s firm, “Sorry, chief. You know the rules. You want to chat, the guns stay out here.” Seems they’re not going to mention Santino’s favorite weapon seated on the couch. 

“As you like.” John turns to look over his shoulder and watch the procession—Santino carrying coffee, Ares and Sameen at his back between him and Carmine, though they peel away to let him through the door and linger at the living room doorway.

John knows who Carmine Pelle is and knows Santino has met with him since John came to work for him, but John’s never actually laid eyes on him before. He’s mastro di giornata, second in command in the ‘Ndrangheta and responsible for passing along the orders of his cousin, Domenico Pelle, the current capo crimine and ‘Ndrangheta High Table seat. Santino mentioned once that he and Flora grew up friends of a kind with Domenico and Carmine, because apparently there are only so many places in the world that the heads of international organized crime can send their children to learn how to count and rub shoulders with people who count, and Switzerland is diligently neutral so long as all involved parties agree not to play too much dirty pool.

John’s seen Santino meet with Domenico before, and they are still friends of a kind, in the way of lifelong chess partners—they respect each other’s talents and applaud each other’s viciousness, remaining friends on the agreement not to take each other’s viciousness personally and remaining friendly on the agreement to play a good game in the good spirits that come with finding a capable opponent. Which is to say that Domenico accepts the choke chain around his neck in good spirits so long as Santino isn’t terribly obnoxious about it.

John sees Domenico’s family resemblance with Carmine, but the clearer impression is that Domenico is far more settled in himself and his arrangement with Santino. Then again, John’s not exactly clear what Domenico’s arrangement with Santino is, never mind Carmine’s, or why Domenico’s friendship with Santino survived but Carmine’s didn’t. Just that Carmine is here, and Santino is in a mood about it, and Carmine noticed he’s in a mood about it and doesn’t seem surprised.

He’s also noticed Caroline and Flora spread out around Santino, and there’s a spark of recognition in Carmine’s face when he sees John. He glances after Santino as if to see where he’s going, as if he’s going to go somewhere else even though the only other place to go is up the stairs to the private quarters, where Santino never takes business partners.

When Santino pauses halfway to the coffee table to find Carmine hasn’t followed, he looks over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. A sign clear as neon that Carmine is testing his patience and hasn’t even sat down yet. “Are you going to sit?”

For a moment, John thinks he might say something, but Santino is radiating pointed politeness that does not cover his mood. So Carmine thinks better of it. “Seems I’ve disturbed the whole house at breakfast.”

“That’s what tends to happen when you show up early in the morning unannounced,” Caroline says. Santino’s face says he’s not amused that Caroline gets to be snarky and he doesn’t.

“My apologies. Good morning, Dr. Turing.”

“Good morning, Carmine.” Caroline nods to the couch across from John and returns to whatever she’s typing, which is probably as close to an invitation as Carmine’s going to get from her.

He takes it for what it is and turns to Flora, skimming over John as if he’s not even there. A rather impressive sign of the feats of diplomacy Santino’s bad moods can inspire. “Flora, still lovely as ever, I see.”

“Carmine,” Flora says, not looking up from cleaning her guns.

That’s...different. Flora shares Santino’s impulse to thumb his nose at the world, but she also tends to present herself as the approachable one. To his credit, Carmine seems willing to pass off her indifference as preoccupation. Then again, he’s also looking away from Caroline and Flora at the mural on the wall, distracted and frozen in place as most people are.

It was apparently Flora’s housewarming gift to Santino upon finishing the apartment after his father’s death, a black and red scream of rage and pain and raw violence textured like the rapidly cooling aftermath of a fight that left no one alive. In some places the paint is scored clean into the wall like a knife in a wide arc, in other places the paint is built up to vicious edges sharp enough to draw blood, in many places the paint was allowed to seep down as if out of a fatal wound. Here fingerprints of a hand failing to scrabble for purchase, there a hand seeming to reach through the wall to grab hold of anyone close enough to be drawn into the massacre.

It covers an entire wall of the living room. The one people see the moment they step inside.

Carmine shakes his head and looks to where Santino sets a cup of coffee on the table across from John, taking the unspoken invitation. It’s a convenient excuse to face away from the mural toward Caroline’s housewarming gift, another piece of Flora’s—a wide black canvas cut through with gold, numbers and symbols and lines intersecting to spell out conflicting theories of intertemporal choice, at times the soft curve of silk ribboning through fingers, at times the sharp edge of a knife opening a vein. Most people prefer to face away from the mural, but then, John supposes that’s the point.

Besides, it means Santino is free to stay facing the mural over Carmine’s shoulder. His favorite position in the apartment. Except Santino doesn’t settle the way he was before, facing Flora at the coffee table—he turns sideways and shuffles to rest his head against the arm of the couch and stretch his legs across John’s lap. It’s pointedly insouciant and casually possessive and far closer than he usually is with John in front of company, especially non-Camorra.

John shoots him a glance as he settles meaning _what are you doing?_ and sees the look Caroline gives Santino behind Flora’s back, though her eyes flick back to her keyboard as soon as John notices her. Santino ignores both of them, so John takes the hint and settles back against the couch watching Carmine. Just fast enough to see Carmine looking away from Santino’s legs spread across John’s lap, his face going carefully blank. Which is exactly why Santino isn’t affectionate in front of company—it tends to decrease the gap between the start of the conversation and company making asses of themselves.

It occurs to John, perhaps too late, that he should have asked Ares to clarify what _he’s in a mood_ means.

“How is Mrs. Pelle?” Santino says as he settles. It takes a second to register that it’s meant for Carmine.

It’s also an oddly formal choice of words, if the way Carmine parses it is anything to go by. “Mimi’s doing fine. Got some seasonal bug she can’t shake, not that it slows her down any.”

“And here you are, traveling when your wife is unwell.” Santino clicks his tongue in a soft _tsk_ that would do Doria proud. Then again, he probably learned it from her.

“Couldn’t be helped.”

“I suppose not.” Santino looks over at him with his polite company smile in place. “I’ll have Doria send over her soup recipe. Always worked wonders for Flora.”

It’s unclear whether the goal of that exercise is to actually send a soup recipe or give Doria a reason to politic with the Pelle housekeeper, but Carmine laughs all the same. “Much obliged.”

They stare at each other a beat too long to salvage small talk, Carmine holding himself still as if waiting for a cue and Santino refusing to give one. Then Santino turns away from Carmine as if he bores him in favor of tracing a finger along John’s arm. “You’re not here to talk about your wife, are you?”

John doesn’t let himself turn away from Carmine to give Santino a proper _what the hell are you doing?_ look, which is how he sees the marginal tightening of disgust around Carmine’s eyes that doesn’t vanish fast enough. At this rate, they won’t even make it past awkward small talk before they hit assholery. “No.”

“Business,” Santino hums, “or pleasure?”

This time the disgust stays set around Carmine’s eyes. “Must we do this with an audience?”

Santino’s smile is brittle when it flashes at him. “What do you want, Carmine?”

Carmine sighs, still meeting Santino’s eye with an expression that says he’s probably reciting a prayer for patience in his head. “Business.”

“For Domenico?”

“No, Domenico didn’t send me.”

“Came to visit me of your own accord, did you? How quaint.” The _t_ catches hard enough in Santino’s teeth to hear the sharp edge.

Carmine is definitely reciting a prayer for patience in his head. “There have been murmurings among the ranks.”

“I fail to see how gossip in your ranks is my concern.” Santino turns back to tracing along John’s arm, clearly bored again.

“This gossip does, given that it concerns you and Domenico being in bed together.”

Even John knows that was a poor choice of words. “Ooo, my favorite kind. Literally or figuratively?”

“ _Santino_ ,” Carmine hisses, a pan flash of disgust flaring again in his face.

“Carmine,” Santino replies, still not looking at him and radiating enough disinterest for the entire block to know it.

“Will you please take this seriously?”

“I always take the truth seriously. We’ve been in bed together for years. Sometimes his wife even joins in.”

A poorly-disguised cough sounds from the general direction of the security boys, cutting out immediately under Caroline’s side-eye.

Carmine’s jaw tenses and releases, swallowing down something he definitely wants to snap at Santino. “They’re not gossiping about that.”

“Boring.”

“They’re saying,” Carmine continues through his teeth, “that Domenico is your lapdog and he can’t hold the crimine without you.”

Even John knows that’s true, at least the part about Domenico being Santino’s lapdog. Along with the rest of the crimine. And even John knows Domenico isn’t bothered by it. Along with the rest of the crimine.

Santino scoffs, reaching out to catch hold of John’s forearm and tug it toward him so he can unfold John’s palm and trace lines there as if it’s utterly fascinating. “That’s not new gossip. If Domenico couldn’t be bothered to annoy me himself and he couldn’t even be bothered to send you to annoy me, he’s not bothered by this.”

Carmine’s eyes flash as soon as Santino unfolds John’s hand, and he doesn’t do a very good job hiding how Santino’s nail tracing circles in John’s palm is grating on him as if that same nail is clawing his eye out. “He’s not yet.”

“Then why are you here, Carmine?” If Santino sounded any more bored, he might fall asleep.

Not disgust, John realizes, seeing the flash in Carmine’s eye again as his gaze flicks away from Santino’s hand on John’s arm. Jealousy. “As a favor to you. And a warning.”

“A warning.” The repetition trips out of Santino’s mouth in blatant mockery of the word. “How is telling me something irrelevant a favor to me?”

“Because it won’t be irrelevant for long.”

“I doubt that.”

Carmine tilts his head and narrows his eyes as if daring Santino to look at him, but he doesn’t, and that only annoys Carmine more. “Domenico won’t be content to stay on your leash forever. And I’m here to tell you it might not be as far away as you think it is.”

Santino barks a laugh, the vibration sinking into John’s forearm even as it swipes across Carmine’s nose. “You can call this little power play whatever you want, but don’t expect me to thank you for it. As I recall, you and Domenico are the ones who owe me a favor.”

“A favor?” Carmine says in a flat tone.

“A lifetime of them, actually,” Santino replies in the same flat tone.

“You honestly look at this and think that we owe you anything?”

“Yes. As I recall, I’m the reason you and Domenico are in your current positions of power. The entire crimine, actually.”

“Because you wiped out the entire crimine that came before us.”

“Semantics,” Santino hums, still not looking at Carmine. “Besides, they had just broken the Covenant and started open war with the Cosa Nostra.”

“A war you helped instigate.”

“Semantics,” Santino hums again, the first prick of a grin on his face flashing at John. Which is probably not a good sign. “And I didn’t hear you or Domenico complaining about my methods at the time. To reiterate, your old guard had just broken the Covenant. If I hadn’t put it down, the rest of the High Table would have gutted you and left you in the sun for the carrion crows. Instead, you and Domenico got your kingdom and your peace and the ‘Ndrangheta raised to new heights.”

“And in the meantime, you put shock collars around our necks.” Carmine’s eyes skate over Flora and Caroline. “Our supply lines. Our money.”

“As I recall, you were all too willing to put your money in the fund,” Santino hums. “As I recall, you lost hundreds of millions year on year rotting in coffee cans in the ground from the humidity while hiding it from the authorities. You were all too eager to get those millions back in circulation, especially when you saw we could make that money legal in every sense that mattered.”

“I’m not talking about your damn fund,” Carmine says coolly, his eyes flashing on Caroline. “That was the old crimine entering into business with your father. I’m talking about you getting rid of the old crimine. You stole our infrastructure out from under us. You made sure we had no choice but to rely on you.”

Santino snorts. “Nothing was stolen.”

“Wasn’t it?” Carmine hisses. “You stole everything from us.”

“Nothing was stolen,” Santino replies evenly, still radiating boredom even as the beginnings of a grin on his face take a mocking edge. “You and Domenico asked for my help. The entire crimine asked for my help. Begged me to put a war down before the rest of the High Table came to destroy you. And because you woke up with an irritatingly selective memory this morning,” his voice takes a razor’s edge even as his eyes spark on John in amusement as if sharing the punchline of a good joke, “I’ll remind you that the entire crimine signed off on the old crimine’s downfall and you were only too happy to let me clear the seats for you, just like you were only too happy to ask for my help when you realized you couldn’t get your house in order after they fell. Nothing was stolen and no knife was held to your throat. You gave me control of your own free will and you were eager to do it.”

“Because we didn’t know what we signed away.”

“Well it’s hardly _my_ fault that you couldn’t be bothered to read the fine print.” He’s definitely grinning now, and it’s definitely not a good sign. “And it’s certainly not my fault that you woke up on the wrong side of the castle this morning pissy about how you won it.”

“I wouldn’t be so arrogant if I were you,” Carmine snaps, harsh as blasting sand. “We have the crimine now. We have the entire ‘Ndrangheta. We own every clod of earth in Calabria and everyone in it. And you may be surprised to find you don’t have strong enough puppet strings to keep us docile anymore.”

Santino finally looks at him. Then he bursts out laughing. It's kind of unnerving given that the look in his eyes says he's curious what Carmine would look like separated from his fingernails.

"Is something about that funny?"

"I know the name of your wife’s crack dealer," Santino replies, still laughing.

John has the distant sense that Carmine’s beat of silence is the calm before the bloodbath. Then his eyes harden, and John knows he was right. “Are you suggesting something?”

“Nothing,” Santino says, his face alive with laughter that doesn’t touch his eyes. “Just that it’s dangerous in the city. Terrible things happen to addicts all the time. And for all your power as mastro di giornata, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it.”

Carmine lunges for Santino, only to crash into John’s hands at his throat, throwing him back into the couch as John stands emanating death by strangulation. Then a hand catches the back of his shirt—Santino, holding him still.

“Touchy subject?” Santino laughs. “I wouldn’t do that again if you don’t want him to snap your neck.” The hand at the back of his shirt tugs. “John. He’s nothing. It’s fine.”

It’s a deliberate choice of words to piss Carmine off. And by the way he stares at John as John sits, his eyes following Santino’s hands on John’s shoulder and his legs stretching back across John with the dawning anger of an addict watching someone else take his hit, it works. “He’s your new one, then?” Carmine says, looking John up and down with the derision of a bird looking at a worm. “Baba Yaga?”

“None of your business, Carmine,” Santino replies, his voice ten degrees cooler. Then again, he’s not going out of his way to avoid throwing it in Carmine’s face, either.

By Carmine’s laugh as he looks at John, Carmine knows it too. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did have a taste for whoring your way through men who might shoot you between the eyes someday.” His eyes settle on Santino, freezing over into something cruel. “Including plenty of men old enough to be your father.”

There’s the unmistakable click of a safety switching off as Flora steps in front of Santino with a handgun aiming for Carmine’s forehead, her jaw set in a hard line and her eyes like stone. Even so, John doesn’t miss the sudden well of cold anger in Santino’s face, or the spark of petty satisfaction in Carmine’s face when he sees it.

“I think you’ve worn out your welcome, Carmine,” Caroline says in an arctic tone, the room suddenly beating with tension between the four of them.

“I think so.” Carmine stands, straightens his jacket and meets Santino’s eyes over Flora’s shoulder, though he doesn’t pause long enough to find out whether Flora was serious. He does pause in front of John though, with an expression that communicates everything he thinks about what he sees. “A word of friendly advice—he’ll stab you just as readily as he’ll let you fuck him.”

“Get out before I kill you myself,” John answers, letting Baba Yaga bleed through.

“Oh he’s got you good, doesn’t he?” Carmine huffs a laugh. “Suit yourself. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Flora keeps her gun trained on him until he leaves the room, and Ares and Sameen are none too gentle about herding him out the front door.

“Why was that necessary?” Flora snaps as she sits back down on the floor.

“Why was what necessary?”

“Taunting him, you jackass. I told you to behave. Which means getting along.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but he wasn’t all that inclined to get along.”

“Probably didn’t help that you threatened his wife. Or taunted him with the fucks you’re now giving someone else.” Flora disassembles the gun with a swiftness borne of familiarity and irritation. “Do you even know who Mimi’s crack dealer is?”

“Of course I know who Mimi’s crack dealer is. You supply him.”

Flora squints at the ceiling, nodding a little as she tallies. “Huh. I do.”

“We need the ‘Ndrangheta money,” Caroline says, not looking up from whatever she’s typing.

“Domenico isn’t interested in starting a war. He knows the ‘Ndrangheta would crumble without us.”

“Good for Domenico,” Flora snaps. “But Carmine is his mouthpiece. And if Carmine decides he’s finally had enough of your horseshit, he might just convince Domenico to follow.”

“Carmine can’t find it in him to quit me any more than Mimi can quit cocaine.”

“You sure about that?”

“He’s had twenty-three years to give it an earnest effort. If he hasn’t managed it yet, he’s not about to start. And Domenico’s just as bad as he is, he just doesn’t care about pretending he wants to quit.”

Caroline stands from her chair and steps to sit in the seat Carmine just vacated, setting her laptop on the table with a quiet click and leaning forward to stare at Santino dead-on. “We can buy a hundred Sicilians anytime we want. But the ‘Ndrangheta are family connections only. It took us years of work to get a few dozen worthwhile ‘Ndrangheta men.”

“You’re having pronoun problems,” Santino replies coolly. “It took _me_ years of work to get a few dozen worthwhile ‘Ndrangheta men.”

It has the flavor of an argument that’s not actually about the topic of the argument. He and Caroline have those once every two or three arguments.

“That’s my point,” Caroline says quietly. “Domenico has no interest in straying, but we can’t afford to lose him. If Carmine’s nervous, he’s here to ask you to do a bit of stagecraft to keep the peace with the masses. And for reassurance.” She settles back against the couch. “So reassure Carmine. Otherwise he won’t play along with the stagecraft convincingly.”

“You're heartless, you know that?” Flora mutters, glaring at Caroline like she wants to reassemble her gun and make use of it.

“Yes,” Caroline says, not looking away from Santino. “And so is Santino. Certainly where Carmine is concerned.”

“I don’t need you to remind me,” Santino says in a tone that could freeze a lake.

Of course, Caroline has ice where her veins ought to be. “You know this is necessary.”

“Burn in hell, Caroline,” Flora snaps.

But Flora’s irritation creates no ripples in Caroline’s calm. “You know I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“Doesn’t stop you from telling him to do it, does it?”

In the blink of an eye, Santino’s irritation flashes to the surface again and swings wide at Flora. “I don’t need your protection. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“That’s what worries me,” she says, suddenly quiet and serious.

That only annoys Santino more, and he pushes himself to stand with a murder glare at his cousin. “Come on,” he says to John, stepping around the coffee table to head for the door.

“Where are you going?” Caroline sighs, even as John stands to follow.

“Not here,” Santino says over his shoulder, pausing in the doorway to glare daggers at her raised eyebrow. “And no, not to reassure Carmine. I’ll deal with him later. Then we can all pretend there’s still any aura of fucking mystery left.” He snatches car keys from the bowl near the door and tosses them to John.

“Not here” turns out to be driving in loops around Rome with Sameen and Ares trailing them on their bikes. After an hour, Santino has him pull into a parking spot so they can disembark for a café Santino wants to visit, which turns into wandering in circles, Sameen and Ares cracking jokes with John in between scanning the crowd. Then Santino pulls them into an art gallery Bedelia has been nagging him to visit, rolling his eyes at Sameen’s groan by saying the culture will do her good.

Compared to the street, the gallery is relatively empty and quiet, but for the chatter of a few patrons. In any case, it’s easier to keep an eye on people, and it gives Santino a chance to ask John’s opinion on the art while Ares and Sameen grumble about the point of modern art, at least long enough for the art dealer to wander over and strike up a conversation as Santino continues his progress.

It’s pleasant, in a way, for Santino to meet with someone who probably doesn’t want to do anything violent to him, and in any case, the art is rather good. John’s still paying attention, though, so when a woman turns a corner and runs into him, dropping her coffee, he snatches the cup out of the air before it has a chance to spill all over the floor. He looks up at the woman, registers just enough to see that she’s not armed, and shoos Ares and Sameen back to Santino.

Then John holds out the recovered coffee to the woman. She’s bright red and thoroughly embarrassed, though it takes a moment to register why she’s familiar—she's the same woman who ran into him in the café this morning.

“Ohmygod, I am so sorry.”

He shakes his head and holds out the coffee. “Don’t worry about it.”

She takes it, though her face is still bright red. “I swear I don’t normally run into people while carrying hot liquid.”

He shrugs, smiling in a way he hopes is reassuring. “It happens.”

“Twice in one day, though.” She hides her face behind one hand, then peers at him as she drops her fingers. “You must think I’m a complete idiot.”

“Nah. Just a run of bad luck.”

“At least I didn’t spill coffee on you this time?” she says, looking more than a bit sheepish at finding that as her best defense.

John still gives her a good-natured chuckle. “That’s the spirit.”

He glances in Santino’s direction to make sure he’s still there, flanked by Ares and Sameen. Santino meets his eyes and raises his eyebrows, though he returns to the art dealer when John gives a small shake of the head. John turns back to find the woman giving him a quizzical look, glancing between him and Santino. It takes a second to realize she’s trying to figure out who Santino is and hoping he’ll explain. Except it’s rather awkward to say _we’re sleeping together_ to a woman he’s barely met, and saying _I kill people for him_ would be worse, so he settles for the simplest answer. "My boss."

That apparently isn’t the answer she was expecting, if her blinking at him is anything to go by. “Sorry, I just...” she cuts short the sentence as if she’s not quite sure where to finish it, then settles for, “I guess I thought you were a tourist.”

John briefly considers telling her how offended Santino would be by that suggestion, but that would be odd to explain to a woman he doesn’t know. Also, he realizes, it’s beside the point, because she’s talking about him, not Santino. “Why did you think that?”

She shrugs, looking embarrassed all over again. “You said you had just gotten off a plane. And you’re American.”

“Just got in from traveling. I usually work here.”

“Ah,” she says, looking marginally less embarrassed. “Where were you traveling?”

He figures there’s no harm in telling her place names, given that she has no reason to know what he was doing. “Riga, Sarajevo, and Berlin.”

“That’s a whirlwind.”

He shrugs. It probably is, but he’s long since become immune to it. “It was spread over two weeks. Work trip.”

“Ah,” she says again, though that probably doesn’t explain anything. “And now you’re back with your boss in Rome?”

“In the flesh.”

She glances at Santino and then back at John, looking mildly amused, though he can’t quite figure out why. “Sounds like your boss is a hardass, if he makes you work weekends after a two-week work trip.”

Which is when he remembers that it’s Saturday and they’re in the middle of an art gallery. “We keep odd hours. You get used to it.”

It’s probably the stupidest excuse she’s heard all month, but she just looks amused and curious. "What do you do for him?"

"Security."

She laughs. "No offense, but you don't seem all that scary."

He laughs despite himself. "You'd be surprised."

“John?” He looks up to find Santino looking at him, his eyebrows raised.

He turns back to the woman, finding her looking a bit sheepish. “Sorry, but that’s my cue.”

“Right.” She nods once, shifting on her feet, then seems to come to a decision. “Well, it was nice running into you again, John.”

“Nice running into you too,” he says, only to realize he doesn’t know her name.

“Helen,” she says, smiling.

“Nice running into you, Helen.” John steps back with a small smile. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again soon.”

“Promise I won’t carry coffee next time,” she says, laughing. He smiles wider and turns to walk toward Santino.

“You done?” Santino asks quietly, his eyebrows still raised.

“Yeah,” John replies, fishing the keys from his pocket. “Let’s go.”

They dawdle a while longer into the late afternoon, but past a certain point, there’s no avoiding going back to the apartment. They find Caroline and Flora working at the dining room table, not at all amused. Santino takes one look at them and decides not to deal with it, instead taking John’s arm to lead him toward the stairs to the second level.

“What are you doing?” Caroline sighs, even though she already knows exactly what Santino’s doing.

“Avoiding my former lover with my current lover,” Santino calls over his shoulder while dragging John up the stairs. “Some would call it healthy decision-making.”

“You don’t know what that is,” Flora shouts at his retreating back, returning his raised middle finger.

The healthy and non-selfish choice would be to make Santino deal with this. But then, John has rarely been accused of being healthy or non-selfish, especially when someone else’s former lovers are involved, so he’s all too happy to follow Santino into the bedroom and avoid dealing with this.

Still, he knows they’re going to have to deal with this eventually, possibly as soon as they open the door, so he does push back when Santino walks him backward to lay flat on the bed before Santino gets the chance to explore further. “What was that?”

“If you really need me to explain what we’re doing, we need to have a serious conversation,” Santino grumbles, rolling into his side to lay on the blankets next to him. “And your head checked.”

John gives him a flat look. “No. With Carmine.”

Santino rolls his eyes in just such a way to say it’s nothing, which means it probably isn’t. “We were sleeping together on and off before he got married. Had an affair running on and off for a while. Things fell apart about fourteen years ago when he saw me on my knees with his closeted uncle.”

…okay then. “The dig about men old enough to be your father?”

“Nino was a boss of the ‘Ndrangheta, a rival of my father’s. Mastro generale to Domenico’s father, who was capo crimine at the time. Domenico and Carmine took the roles of capo crimine and mastro di giornata when I cleared the way for them, but Carmine’s never let me forget it.” Santino laughs a low rumble in his chest, not meeting John’s eyes. “Of course, he also never let it stop him from one-night stands with me either. Always had a better grasp of Catholic guilt than self-censure.”

“Flora get that pissed at all the men you sleep with?” It’s a rather heartening thought.

“She never forgave Carmine for his reaction to Nino.” Santino smirks. “Is this the part in the rom-com where you ask if it means anything or if I still have feelings for him?”

“No, it’s the part where I ask if you want me to kill him.”

Santino’s smirk widens to a smile that shows too many teeth. “Such a romantic.”

“What can I say,” John says, dry as the desert, “I have a taste for the classics.”

“You have a strange definition of classics.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Touche.” Santino settles against John, a finger idly tracing the cross on his shoulder. “Carmine was always tetchy about anyone knowing his tastes ran to men, given the types of men we run with.”

“That was more than tetchy.”

Santino gives him a look that says he’s not at all amused that John picked this moment to be observant. “I leveraged it for information against his father’s branch of the ‘Ndrangheta.”

“Blackmail?”

Santino’s eyes settle on the cross as his fingers trace around it again. “And gamesmanship, among other things.” One shoulder rises, then drops. “I’m willing to use every tool at my disposal.”

“More than Carmine?”

The shoulder rises and drops again. “Doesn’t work as well anymore now that I’m not the young son no one sees as a fully-fledged threat, but I can still use it from time to time when there are closeted upstarts who think they’ve found a weakness they can use against me.” Santino chuckles darkly. “Weakness implies shame, and I’m not the one between us who’s ashamed. Giovanni had plenty for both of us. The difference between me and my father is that I have unique leverage against a certain kind of men and no shame to shackle me.”

“Somehow I doubt Giovanni appreciated the difference.”

“No. But I had a lifetime of practice ignoring his displeasure and still more when he found out about my preference for the wrong parts at fifteen.” The shoulder rises and drops again. “A dead man’s shame is little more than a bad memory.”

John is silent long enough that Santino turns to look at his face again, one brow going up. “I can see the gears whirling. What are you thinking?”

“That it’s a good thing for Giovanni he’s already dead, or else I’d kill him myself.”

Santino barks a laugh. “You say the sweetest things. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a damsel in distress any more than you’re a knight.”

“You’d look terrible in a dress, and that’s not the point. It’s still satisfying.”

“True.”

“You want me to do to Carmine what I did to Moscone?”

“Tempting,” Santino purrs, then sighs. “Unfortunately, I need him alive.”

“To reassure him?”

“We do this dance from time to time,” Santino says, tracing a path on the cross on John’s shoulder again. “Carmine gets antsy, I let him think he has a hold, he crawls back to Mimi, I visit Domenico and his wife for a bit of stagecraft and good wine, and we all carry on as usual.”

Silence.

A mischievous smile sparks on Santino’s face. “You’re jealous.”

“I never claimed not to be possessive.”

“As a black hole,” Santino quips. “But then, so am I. And trust me, Catholic guilt isn’t half as fun as it’s made out to be.”

“Then don’t do it.” John pulls Santino in and kisses him deep. “Stay.”

Santino huffs a laugh. “Trust me. This is the easiest way.” He kisses John again, catching his lip in his teeth before letting go. “I’ll smooth his feathers, Domenico and I will put on a good show, Carmine will hide in his guilt with Mimi again, and we’ll all carry on in good spirits.”

The look on John’s face says exactly what he thinks about Santino smoothing Carmine’s feathers. Still, he runs a hand over Santino’s chest and rests his forehead against him. “Be safe with him.” Because if this isn’t a fight he’s destined to win, he may as well take his minor victories.

“The way I’m never safe with you?” Santino goes to kiss him again, rolling his eyes when John pulls back. “I’ll be pathetically vanilla and embarrassingly safe. His damn Catholic guilt won’t leave room for anything in the same continent as fun.”

“Boring as sin?” John murmurs, coming close again to work his way along Santino’s jaw.

“Way more boring than sin,” Santino replies, grinning like the devil. “So give me a reminder of what I’ll be missing in the meantime.”

John does. At least until Flora bangs on the door and shouts at them to pretend to be decent and come eat dinner like civilized people.

Caroline can’t get Santino to deal with Carmine that night, but by the following morning she puts her foot down. So Santino sets up a meeting with Carmine in a café for lunch, but when John goes to don his guns, Santino catches his arm and shakes his head.

“You’re sitting this one out.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“You being there will just piss him off. And I won’t be alone with him.” He nods to Sameen and Ares and the security boys outfitting themselves with a minor armory. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have a small army.”

John’s not happy about it, but he knows between Santino and Caroline’s cool gaze on his back that he’s not destined to win this fight. And while it is something of a relief when Caroline leaves shortly after Santino to go to work, taking her security with her, that still leaves John rattling around the apartment with Flora and her team and nothing to do but brew.

After about an hour of puttering, though, Flora marches upstairs, takes one look at him, and announces he needs to put on presentable clothes.

“Why?”

“Because we’re going out in public, that’s why.”

“Why are we going out in public?”

“Because you’re moping.”

“I am not moping.”

“If you cleaned that gun any more, it could be used for surgery.” She holds out a hand, wagging her fingers. “Up. Come on. We’re going on an adventure.”

“The armed kind?”

“I really need to steal you from Santino more,” she grumbles, shooing him to his clothes. “No, not the armed kind. The out and about kind. The get some sunshine and have a pleasant afternoon kind. The normal people kind.”

“We’re not normal people.”

“Shut up and get dressed.”

He does, though he’s not quite sure what Flora’s idea of normal people fun entails, given that she has to travel with an armed entourage.

Apparently, Flora’s idea of normal people fun involves wandering around the streets of Rome and meandering into whatever place catches their eye. She quizzes John about time he spent in Rome before Santino, but given that he was usually here to kill people or make a point, it doesn’t involve much that could be called normal. She is pleased by his knowledge of art museums, though, and decides to show him some of the better art galleries she knows. Most of them are even legal art dealers.

And when she turns them into a familiar gallery, her face lights up when she sees that he recognizes it. “You know this one?”

“Santino brought us here yesterday. Apparently Bedelia’s been nagging him to come.”

“Took him long enough,” Flora mutters, then brightens. “Did he show you the good ones?”

John shrugs. “Bit preoccupied making sure no one tried to shoot him.”

Flora rolls her eyes. “Honestly, that man.” She loops her arm in his and steers him along with her, which is a bit like a kitten cuddling up to a Doberman. “Come on. You’ll like these. Astrid and Mikkel can handle this on their own.”

He’s seen Astrid and Mikkel at work. Being a former FBI agent who used to work with morally dubious government fringe scientists and a Mossad assassin who once killed a guy with a mop, they can in fact handle it on their own, and he does in fact like these pieces, now that he has enough mental capacity to pay attention to them. Flora seems to know every artist in the gallery, if not personally then at least through buyers, and tells him about all of them as if they’re old friends.

It’s kind of nice, actually, and almost makes him forget why he’s here with Flora and not Santino. Then again, coming here with Santino arm-in-arm would probably imply something that they aren’t, so he shoves that thought down as soon as it arises. The point is to not think about Santino for the time being, and his adoptive sister is actually rather fun to be around.

It works until he hears, “Hey, John!” and turns to see Helen standing there looking pleasantly surprised to find him in her gallery again. “Back already?”

“Couldn’t stay away. Well,” he turns and looks at Flora, who grins up at him, “a knowledgeable source said I’d enjoy this, and I wasn’t about to refuse.”

Helen looks between them looking a tad bemused. The same look she passed between him and Santino. “And are you enjoying it?”

That, at least, he can answer easily. “It’s a great collection.”

Helen smiles and splays her hands. “Probably helps that I don’t have anything to drop on you this time, huh?”

“There you go, progress.”

“Sorry, who is this?” Flora asks, her winning-over smile in place and approximately a 0.0% chance that she missed the look Helen passed between the two of them.

Shit. “Sorry.” John tries to think of what to tell Flora that won’t sound awkward and ends up looking to Helen, perhaps in a prayer that a stranger can come up with something that won’t sound awkward to his…to Santino’s sister. “We ran into each other the other morning. Then Santino decided to come here and we ran into each other again.”

“Literally ran into each other,” Helen adds, looking a bit pained by it. “I ran into him, anyway.”

“Oh!” Flora lights up in a way that isn’t reassuring. “She’s the one who spilled coffee all over you?”

Helen winces. “Oh god. I’m infamous.”

“No, no,” Flora says easily, “he likes to pretend he’s smooth or something. It’s healthy to be reminded he’s full of shit.” Helen laughs, Flora looking her up and down all the while. Then Flora disentangles her arm from John and pats his elbow with a grin that John suspects will bode poorly for him, and sure enough. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Thought I saw a restroom sign around the corner.” Flora turns her grin briefly to Helen. “Excuse me a minute?”

“Sure.”

Flora turns on her heel and strides around the corner, Astrid and Mikkel moving casually around her. She completely ignores the _what the hell are you doing_ look John shoots at her back, which doesn’t stop John from doing it.

“So...” he turns back to Helen to find her looking between him and Flora’s retreating back, “girlfriend?”

That would explain the look. “Boss’s sister.” 

“You travel with your boss’s entire family?”

“Family-owned and operated business.” Which isn’t strictly untrue.

“Sounds like a tight-knit family,” Helen replies, though her lips quirk. Possibly teasing.

John thinks of Gianna in New York in a continuing trend of spending most of her life in a different country from her only immediate family, of Santino’s mother dead for twenty-three years and his father dead for twelve, of Flora groomed to inherit one part of the family business from the age of four, of the D’Antonio wedding in Paris where family bonding consisted of kissing ass to vie for a higher probability of an ugly death. “You could say that.”

Helen laughs a little, though John’s not sure what he said that might have been amusing. “Where’s the boss, then?”

And just when he had almost succeeded in ignoring Carmine. “Got called into a business meeting.”

“Ah.” Helen still looks amused, but also like she’s inspecting him, and John can’t tell what for. “You’re working with the boss’s sister, then?”

“No. She—” John starts to say _she dragged me out for fun_ , but that would likely invite a question as to why he needed dragging, and that way lies Santino. “She decided I needed a break and she’s an art fan, so,” he nods generally to the gallery, “we wandered in.”

“So…” Helen pauses for a breath and then draws a breath in, seeming to come to a decision. “If you’re not working, and the boss’s sister decided you need to take a break, I think I still owe you coffee, and my boss just let me off for my lunch break.”

In retrospect, John maybe should have seen this coming. It’s a sign of how distracted he is by Carmine that he didn’t.

“If you’re interested, I mean. And free.”

It…honestly sounds like a fantastic distraction from Carmine. “I am.”

“I’m sensing a but?”

“No, I mean,” John scrambles for something that won’t sound pathetic, “I’m sort of on loan until the boss’s sister has to go back to work.”

“I hear my honorific.” Of course Flora chose that moment to reappear. If John had to bet money, she was listening around the corner. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, just,” he gestures vaguely toward Helen, unsure of what else to do, “Helen asked if I’m free—”

“For coffee?” Definitely listening around the corner.

John gives her a look he hopes Helen can’t see, or at least he hopes she interprets it differently than _can you not be the worst?_ “And I told her I’m on a break on your good graces, so.”

“So what’s the problem?” Flora smiles up at him, looking entirely too innocent for John’s own good. “I’m still looking around, I can putter for an hour, you’re on my good graces, so go take a break and have coffee and meet me back here in an hour.”

Helen’s standing right there looking hopeful, so he can’t ask Flora what the hell she’s doing or why the hell she’s doing it. And in any case, Helen does seem like fun, and better still has nothing whatsoever to do with Santino. So John smiles at her. “Sounds like I’m free for an hour.”

Helen smiles. “I can work with that.”

They get coffee at a little cafe up the street, and it's fun. Helen is quick-witted, generally unfazed by John's shortness of words and impressed by his awareness of art, small though it is relative to hers.

It’s fun.

And yet, for some reason, he keeps thinking of Heather, grown bitter and sharp with hating her husband. But Helen is nothing at all like Heather Moscone. He shoves the thought down and smiles, asking her about another new artist recently arrived in the gallery.

Flora waits for him when he gets back, chatting with Mikkel and Astrid as though one of them didn’t spot him the moment they turned back on the block. Flora grins ear to ear when she sees him, so he’s not surprised when she crows across the gallery, “Do you have _any_ _idea_ what time it is, young man?”

“You’re my age.”

“The difference being you lost your sense of humor somewhere in that interval,” Flora returns.

He doesn’t bother correcting her that he never had one, just rolls his eyes and turns back to Helen. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Hopefully you had more fun now that I drank my coffee instead of dropping it on you,” Helen says. At least now, he notes, she had enough fun that she’s no longer sheepish about making that joke.

“It was good company and good coffee.” Which is actually true, for all his distraction about Heather Moscone and his periodic impulse to scan the coffee shop for threats only to realize that he didn’t need to because Santino wasn’t there.

“I’m glad.” Helen has a nice smile, John thinks, and even if he never sees her again, it was nice, having this little interlude where his life wasn’t defined by violence. “Looks like we both have to get back to it?”

“Looks like.” John steps back to Flora with a small wave. “See you around.”

“Not if I run into you first,” Helen says, giving him one more smile before turning and stepping away to speak with a customer.

“You mind telling me what that was?” John murmurs to Flora as he turns away.

“You having a coffee break, what else?” Flora shakes her watch out of her sleeve and hooks her arm in his again. “Come on. Santino should be done by now. If we have any luck, that’ll be that.”

“Do we have any luck?”

“Carmine is involved,” she mutters darkly. “And Santino’s in a mood.” John hoped she wouldn’t say that.

They return to find Caroline arriving at the same time and Santino already there, perched on the terrace with a dark cloud over his head wide enough to blot the sun. John suspects Ares and Sameen herded him there to give the security teams a vague semblance of breathing space, though they probably need a city’s distance to breathe easy.

“Carmine’s feathers smoothed?” John asks, sitting on the bench a few feet clear of where Santino’s leaning on the rail to glare at the rooftops.

“He sent a representative.”

“And that went over brilliantly.” If Caroline were anyone other than Caroline, John would be vaguely concerned about her sarcasm ending in imminent stabbing.

“I told him I don’t negotiate with fleas, and if Carmine wants to be a child I’ll call Domenico to have an actual adult conversation.”

“That well, then,” Caroline mutters, dropping her purse down on the tile to fold herself into a chair.

“Going over Carmine’s head will just piss him off,” Flora says. She vanishes briefly into the living room and reappears with a bottle of gin and two glasses of ice, because apparently her brother reminded her it might as well be five o’clock somewhere.

“I have been doing this for twelve years, you know,” Santino replies, pushing himself to stand and crossing over to John. “I told him Carmine has until tonight to call me and set up another meeting if he’s actually inclined to talk.” Santino digs his phone from his pocket and drops it on the table in front of them with a loud clatter and stretches over the bench with his head in John’s lap. His eyes drift closed as John’s hand comes to rest in his hair so he can’t see Flora’s irritated glare when he settles.

“Will he?” Flora pours two generous glasses of gin and holds one out to Caroline, setting the bottle by her foot just in case she needs to pour more or throw it at Santino.

“I repeat: I’ve been doing this for twelve years,” Santino replies, his eyes still closed.

“Normally in the last twelve years you don’t taunt him with the fucks you’re now giving other men,” Flora snaps. “In case you didn’t notice, he was pissed off.”

“He’ll call.” He’s been doing this for twelve years, so there’s no way he can’t feel Flora’s glare over her gin glass at him. Nor is there any way he misses Flora’s glare resurfacing when he gets up an hour later and tugs John to follow him inside.

John’s not sure who he wants to be right, but in the end, it’s out of his hands. Carmine calls late, when Santino already brought John to the master bedroom with him to laze on top of him so that he has to reach across John to get the phone. Then again, that’s probably the point. They’re not on the phone long, perhaps because Carmine can sense that Santino isn’t alone and is annoyed by the late phone call. Still, Santino was right—Carmine agrees to meet in person in two days, at the same time. Santino barely hangs up the phone before he heaves it across the room.

At least he has Santino to himself the following day, though it occurs to him around lunch that Carmine is dragging this out deliberately. 

Still, Santino can’t afford to piss Carmine off, which means he leaves once again on the following day and John is once more left with nothing to do. Flora takes one look at him and announces she’s got a job for him, if he wants to stop moping. He’s not moping, but he agrees anyway.

Flora says she wants to meet with an art dealer. It’ll be banal, given that John isn’t a bodyguard by nature and the art dealer is above the board, but at least it’s something to do, and in any case, art dealers mean art to look at, and legal art dealers mean there probably won’t be anyone looking to shoot Flora.

In retrospect, John probably shouldn’t be surprised that the end up in the same damn art gallery as two days ago. Nor should he be surprised when he goes to follow her to the back office and Flora stops him, telling him she’ll be perfectly fine with Astrid and Mikkel, that she’ll probably be an hour and he can relax out here. And yet.

And yet, much like her adoptive brother, Flora has a way of being surprising, and surprising doesn’t necessarily mean things will end well for John.

“Flora.”

“John.”

“Why did you bring me back here if you had no intention of bringing me into the meeting with you?”

“No reason. Just thought you had fun last time.” Flora’s smile up at him is entirely too innocent. “Take the hour. Enjoy the art.” She nods over his shoulder. “Say hi to your friend. I’ll be back.”

John glances over his shoulder to find Helen there, just long enough for Flora to pat his arm and slip away to talk to the art dealer with Astrid and Mikkel at her back. He’s going to kill Flora, he thinks. At the rate she’s going, Santino would probably only shoot him for it.

“You look like you’re working,” Helen says. “And like you’re not enjoying it.”

“Yes and no.” He glares at Flora’s retreating back. “Unexpected change of plans. Guess she decided she didn’t need a third security guy in the room.”

“It is a small office.” He turns back to Helen to find her trying not to laugh. “Guess she must like the art.”

“Guess so.”

“What about you?”

“I mean, I’m not much for,” he turns to the piece hanging next to him, which appears to be a bright red canvas covered in a mass of indiscernible black material that looks vaguely like bubbling tar, “…whatever this is, but the rest is nice.”

Helen bites her lip, clearly trying not to laugh. “We just sold that for four thousand.”

John can’t help the _seriously?_ look that breaks through, and Helen bursts out laughing. “I mean, I could see asking four thousand for that one,” he points to a piece across the way, a rather nice ink painting of a single koi fish swimming through rain-dappled water, the sole still point and the one lonely spot of color in a black and white canvas made up of movement. “But not the tar thing.”

“We’re asking ten thousand for it,” Helen says, biting her tongue to stop laughing when customers glance over in reproach.

“Good.”

“Well,” Helen nods to another piece, what looks to be a lioness carved from onyx, “what about that one? Four digits.”

John squints at it a minute. “Eight thousand.”

“Six-thousand four-hundred.”

“Seriously?”

Helen shrugs. “Apparently onyx isn’t what it used to be.”

“Even with the material, look at the detail work.”

“Sure. But not everyone buys a sculpture for their house.”

“Clearly someone does, or you couldn’t get away with asking six-thousand four-hundred for it.”

“Point taken,” Helen laughs, and points to another one in the corner of the gallery. “What about that one?”

They go back and forth like that over several pieces in a loop around the room, and while John doesn’t pretend to know much about art, he can at least quip things that are occasionally funny. Or at least, Helen seems to think so. It’s pleasant, and the next thing John knows, he looks up to see Mikkel perched in the corner to get his attention, a cue that Flora is shortly behind.

He glances down at his watch and makes a show of noticing the time. To be fair, it’s easy to feign surprise when he’s actually surprised. “There goes an hour?”

“Was it really?”

“Looks like.” Sure enough, the door to the back office opens. “Sorry for distracting you from work.”

“Technically, I was giving you quotes for pieces,” Helen says primly, though her grin gives her away. “So technically, I was still working.”

John laughs, then sighs, glancing at Flora, who has just reappeared and is chatting with the dealer. “Looks like my cue to get back to work just reappeared.”

Helen glances toward the back, tilting her head as she turns back to him. “You know, if you liked the koi, I’ve got another piece like it in the back. I could text you a photo.”

He shouldn’t be having fun with this, with Flora approaching any second. “Is that your way of asking for my number?”

“Is it working?”

John shouldn’t be doing this, and not just because Flora is approaching. He has occasional fun to blow off steam, but that does not generally include giving anyone his phone number. Nor has he wanted occasional fun to blow off steam in a while, nor is he sure whether or not he wants to let this stretch longer than the limits of the hour. He wants to step out with Flora, to let this hour be just an hour and go back to Santino’s apartment where he belongs.

 _The apartment he uses to sleep with other men?_ his brain supplies. _The hour you only have because he’s meeting with Carmine?_

It’s that thought, more than anything, that leads him to dig his phone out of his pocket, though his hands itch at the idea of Helen’s name sharing space with Santino. He doesn’t hand over the phone, though, and instead asks her to rattle off her number and sends her a text so she has his. After all, the last thing he needs is for her to see anything on his phone that might require murder, because Helen is actually fun.

“You get a hot date?” Flora quips as soon as they step outside.

“No,” he growls, blinking in the sun. “You get any art?”

“Not yet.” She digs her elbow into his side, grinning up at his glare. “Guess we’ll both have to work on that.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“I think I’m hilarious.”

Helen does text him a photo, though he doesn’t answer right away, because Santino is back in the apartment and they’re both relieved by it. Still, the meeting made it clear that Carmine intends to drag this out, and Santino has no interest in turning this into a production. Which means paying Carmine a visit at the Continentale to speed things along. Caroline’s concurrence that this is necessary does not lessen John’s impulse to shoot Carmine.

“If you glare at that page any harder, the whole book will combust.”

“You noticed?” Then again, Santino is facing the mirror putting himself in order to speed things along, and John leans against the headboard with a book in his hand, deliberately not noticing. He hasn’t turned a page since Santino started putting himself in order, but that’s neither here nor there. 

“Boring as sin, remember?” Santino says, picking his watch up to open the clasp.

“Certainly doesn’t stop you from doing it.”

Santino pauses mid-motion, his hands still in the air as he looks up and meets John’s eye in the mirror. “He’s just business. I’m just shaking hands. You know that.”

Intellectually, yes. But then, John’s nonexistent sharing instincts have never been attached to intellect. Especially right now, when the word _business_ hits a sour note, a reminder that he’s still not clear what he and Santino are doing here. “I work for you. Does that make me business?”

Santino carefully sets the watch down turning to face John as John turns back to his page. “The fact of you working for me is just the convenient fact of how I stole you from Viggo. And the fact that I would be blind and deaf and dumb as mud not to appreciate your talents.”

John doesn’t look up, only to find a hand gently taking his book from him and setting it aside, looking up to find Santino standing over him, looking at him. John raises an eyebrow.

“Business doesn’t get to stay the night. Business doesn’t get repeat performances. And business certainly doesn’t get to come home.”

“So I’m the wife sitting around waiting for you to get back?” John says flatly.

“You’d look terrible in a dress.” When John shifts his head to pull away, Santino catches him with one hand. “I’m saying if I had another way to deal with this, I would. I’m saying that I’ll spend the entire time wanting to be here,” a thumb runs along his jaw, “and that I’ll spend the entire time pretending he’s you.”

John looks at him, leaning into the warmth of the hand on his face. Then he drags Santino forward for a kiss that’s mostly teeth, one hand taking a fistful of his shirt and the other taking a fistful of his hair, holding on long enough to ruin all of Santino’s work and pushing hard enough to light up pain receptors, not letting go until he’s sure they both see stars.

Santino chuckles, biting his lip and resting his head against John. “Like that.”

“For the record, I still don’t like this.” Which doesn’t mean he’s letting go of Santino.

“I don’t either.” Which doesn’t mean Santino’s not going to do it.

John exhales through his nose. “Be safe with him.” Because he’ll take his petty victories where he can.

Santino rolls his eyes. “Pathetically vanilla and embarrassingly safe.”

In summary, everything that bores Santino to murder. And _that_ is the best victory John can hope for right about now. And so Santino stands, finishes putting himself in order, and leaves to get this over with.

Which leaves John. With nothing to do. Also with his phone. Which buzzes where Flora can hear it.

“You going to answer her?” Flora says, not looking up from cleaning her guns.

“There a reason you’re hellbent on me answering her?” John retorts, not looking up from his book.

“John.” When he doesn’t look up, a hand reaches up and lowers his book so he’s stuck meeting Flora’s eye. “You don’t owe it to him to be miserable.”

“I’m not.”

Flora gives him a look. “I’m not saying propose to her or something. I’m just saying you don’t owe it to my brother to sit here and be miserable. Helen’s fun, you had fun. And I’m certainly not going to judge you for having a bit of fun. Especially when my brother is with his shitbird ex.”

“You get this pissed at all the men your brother sleeps with?” It’s a heartening thought, minus the vague possibility of it being directed at John.

“Just the shitbirds. And Carmine is nothing of not complete bird shit.” Flora drops the phone into his hands. “But that doesn’t mean you have to wallow in the shit too.” When John just stares at her flatly, Flora sighs. “I’m not going to shove this down your throat—”

“Too late.”

“But,” Flora talks over him, “I really do mean it when I say I’m not going to judge you for having your fun, just as much as I mean it when I say you don’t owe it to him to be miserable.”

He’s not miserable. He’s not wallowing either. It’s just that the other men Santino sleeps with come with clear rules and expiration dates. One-night fun only, no strings, no lingering, no repeats, no negotiations. Which means he can at least settle down in the knowledge that their invitation to Santino’s periphery is temporary. Carmine isn’t. Carmine has been waffling around Santino for twenty-three years, regardless of the fact that the recent half of them were tenuous at best, regardless of the fact that Santino is long-since bored of him. And right now, the fact of Santino’s irritation at having to slip back into the same damn thing, the fact that John has an invitation to stay and Carmine doesn’t, the fact that Santino’s coming back to John and not Carmine, doesn’t feel like much of a victory. Because Santino isn’t here.

John picks up his phone and opens Helen’s text, ignoring the gentle smile Flora gives him.

Helen is no substitute for Santino. They’re completely different people. But she’s still fun to talk to, and has an endless supply of photos of art from her gallery matched by an endless supply of witty commentary.

It’s fun, breaking up his reading by answering Helen, occasionally showing Flora photos of art he knows will get a reaction. It has no bearing on anything. He’s just a stranger named John who she dumped coffee on twice, and it’s kind of nice, being just John for a little while, even if everything he says as just John is purely superficial and offers nothing of John Wick.

He turns the phone off when Mikkel lets them know Santino and company are pulling into the courtyard, still ignoring the gentle smile Flora gives him before looking to Santino entering the room.

He’s visibly mussed, as if he couldn’t be bothered to stay put in front of a mirror long enough to hide it. His masks are also gone, probably stripped as soon as he sat down in the car if his security’s tetchiness is any indication, which is unusual. Still more unusual is that he’s radiating tiredness and emotional negative space like white noise, as if he needs a wall of blankness to keep everyone at arm’s length so he doesn’t have to fake emoting back at them.

Flora frowns but stays where she is, watching Santino cut across the living room even though she clearly wants to stand and hug him. “You okay?”

“Tired,” he replies, stopping behind the couch to rest his face in John’s hair and let a long breath out.

“How’s Carmine?”

John doesn’t mean to stiffen, but he knows Santino feels it and Flora sees it. Santino exhales again, resting his forehead against John before standing upright, somehow blanker than before. “Agreeable. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Sure.”

Santino steps around the couch without looking at her, though he does pause three steps up the stairs to turn back to John, his eyes completely dead and flat. “You coming up?”

John thought he might not be welcome, based on Flora holding herself in. Still, it’s as good an invitation as any, so he stands and follows, feeling Flora studying him as he goes.

Santino doesn’t look back at him as he goes upstairs, nor does he look back as John follows him to the master bedroom, as if he doesn’t know John’s there. John settles out of the way on the edge of the bed, but Santino doesn’t look at him again. Alone in a room with him, his blankness is like a tide sweeping away the last of John’s expressiveness too, even when Santino drifts into the bathroom without looking at him and closes the door with a quiet click. John can feel it under the sound of the shower, as if his own internal tide is shifting into rhythm with Santino’s under the pull of Santino’s gravity.

And when Santino reappears from the bathroom, worn out and clearly ready to be rid of the entire day in favor of unconsciousness, John takes his cue to leave. He sits up from the bed to trek to his own room only for Santino’s fingers to catch his shoulder, to hear Santino murmur that he can stay if he wants to.

“You’re about to fall asleep.”

Santino leans his head into John’s shoulder like he wants to fall asleep right there. “That’s the whole point.”

They don’t do this. The only time they sleep in the same bed is after sleeping together, when they’re still tangled together and can’t find the will or the want to move, and even that’s not a guarantee. LA was an exception born of pragmatism, ensuring that anyone trying to kill Santino would literally have to go through John first. Except there’s no one trying to kill Santino now, and they’re not fucking. There’s no reason.

“Stay,” Santino breathes into his back.

John leans back against Santino, turning to rest his face against Santino’s head. “Okay.”

The fingers catching his shoulder become arms wrapped around him, pulling him back into the bed. After a minute of reshuffling, they end up facing each other with their legs tangled together, Santino’s face burrowed into his chest. He falls asleep wrapped around John like a koala around a tree, quiet and content, and John feels something that’s been snappish for days quiet and settle as his breath evens out to match Santino. He wakes up the next morning in the same position to find Santino has somehow burrowed even closer in his sleep. He has a few minutes before Santino wakes up to wonder if he ought to feel awkward, or worry that this will turn awkward when Santino wakes up and comes to his senses, but it doesn’t feel awkward.

And when Santino blinks awake to find he’s wrapped around John, he lets out a contented hum and shifts the angle of his burrowing and the tangle of their legs to get comfortable again, radiating quiet pleasure. It doesn’t feel awkward at all. It just feels like where they’re supposed to be.

After a little while, they stumble downstairs and settle on the terrace in the morning sun, which is to say John lays across the bench with a pillow under his head and Santino does his best koala-meet-tree impression on top of him again. To be fair, it’s still surprisingly early, and they’re up before anyone else but for the security boys on the night shift who are still hiding in case Santino woke up as flat and blank as he was when he reappeared last night. So John soaks up the heat from the sun and the heat from Santino on top of him, content to pretend the world doesn’t exist.

At least until he hears a quiet snort and cracks open an eye to find Sameen and Ares standing at the door to the terrace, Ares hiding her smile behind her hand and Sameen wearing a grin with entirely too much shit in it for this hour. “You comfortable?”

“If you’re going to wake me up,” Santino growls without opening his eyes, “you’d better have coffee.”

They snicker, but they beat a hasty retreat nonetheless.

“Sounds like we won’t have peace and quiet for much longer,” John murmurs.

“Shut up,” Santino replies, doing his best impression of dead weight.

It sounds like a great idea to John, so he closes his eyes and resumes pretending the world doesn’t exist.

He’s not asleep, though, so he can hear movement coming down the stairs and hushed voices, someone padding up to the terrace only to retreat to the kitchen. So he’s not really surprised when footsteps return and he hears Flora coo loud enough to make sure Santino’s awake, opening his eyes to find Flora setting down a tray with coffee and cups on the table, Caroline following close behind with her own mug already full and smirking at Santino as she pulls up a chair.

“You alive?” she says, because she has neither sentiment nor subtlety when the opportunity arises to give Santino shit.

“No,” Santino replies, his eyes still firmly closed. “I’m speaking to you from beyond the grave.”

“Yup, he’s fine,” Flora says brightly, setting two coffee mugs within range. “Sit up and rejoin the living. We come bearing the good shit.”

“I knew I kept you for a reason,” Santino replies, finally blinking his eyes open and stretching on top of John.

“It’s not for you, it’s for your boyfriend who apparently has mystical restorative powers,” Flora replies tartly, grinning when Santino cuts her a flat look and sits up. “But you can have some too. Because we like you, I guess.”

By the looks of Flora’s pajamas and Caroline’s rumpled LSE sweatshirt, they stayed the night. Then again, Santino got back late, and Flora must have called Caroline after Santino and John went upstairs. They have their own homes in Rome—Caroline in the top two floors of an apartment building in Coppede overlooking Villa Albani about ten minutes from her office, Flora in the refurbished Palazzo Costaguti, her parents’ former home on Piazza Mattei which doubles as her office and is next door to her firm’s actual offices. Yet, in much the same way the two guest rooms at the front of the house belong to them and are used by their proper owners at least once a week, Flora and Caroline have their own rooms in Santino’s apartment where they tend to stay as the whim strikes them. Or when they know Santino needs them.

John knows what’s coming, because both Flora and Caroline are here, but they’re at least nice enough to let Santino make it several gulps into the mug before they press. It is, as promised, the good shit.

“Not to bring up a sore subject,” Flora starts.

“And yet,” Santino replies. Fortunately he’s just sleepily annoyed and not forcibly blank the way he was last night. “Can we at least get through breakfast first?”

“Then we’ll be thinking about it all through breakfast,” Caroline says through her coffee. “I’m not giving Carmine the satisfaction of ruining breakfast.” Caroline takes food quite seriously, for all that she delights in giving Mischa fits.

Apparently, Santino can’t argue with that. He’s still hiding behind his coffee, though not because he’s not awake. “I went. I moved things along.”

“So…?” When Santino just stares at her, Flora gestures at the air, looking hopeful. “He tell you what he wanted?”

Santino snorts. “He made it quite clear what he wanted.”

“Did he tell you what’s got his panties in a twist?” Caroline clarifies.

“I have a guess.”

“So that’s that?” Flora says, looking hopeful enough that John has a split second to hope that this might be over with. “You negotiated the dinner theatre and you’re heading to San Luca?”

Naturally, it’s not. “He wasn’t in the mood for negotiation.”

Flora stares at him, but Caroline speaks up before she can poke Santino with a stick. “What do you mean he wasn’t in the mood for negotiation?”

Santino sets his coffee down harder than he needs to. “I mean it was a fucking production just to get him to let me in his room. And an even worse production to get him cooperative again.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Flora snaps. “You own him, his wife, his descendants, and the miserable patch of muddy boondocks they’re so fucking proud of. Give his collar a yank and tell him to get the fuck over himself.”

“I have. And I told him to meet me at Mischa’s restaurant. He has tonight to make himself useful before I call Domenico to see if there’s actually a reason I need to give a shit about San Luca.”

Mischa’s restaurant, Wrath of the Lamb, is in the building directly across Piazza Mattei from Flora’s front door. It’s one of the safest places for Santino to be in Rome, given that Flora functionally owns Piazza Mattei. Or at least, she owns her house, the buildings on either side of it as office space for the design and architecture halves of her firm, the building adjacent to it (showrooms for Flora’s fabric company/counterfeiters of choice and the storefront of her historic restoration/dinner reservation provider of choice) and the building Mischa’s restaurant sits in, the floor above it belonging to the event planning company of another Rosalia cousin named Elle (a front for Elle’s team of con artists and thieves, because apparently Rosalia creativity with their front companies and Rosalia ingenuity in breaking the law is as endless as the Rosalia clan itself). Which is to say that every inch of Piazza Mattei is covered by cameras and bristling with Flora’s minor army of discreetly armed security, circulating through tourists who have no damn clue what they walked into when they decided to visit the Fontana delle Tartarughe.

It’s one of the safest places for Santino to be in Rome, given that anyone with a spare firing neuron knows better than to sneeze in the general direction of Flora’s turf without her say-so. This does not mean John is happy about it.

Apparently, neither is Flora. “This is ridiculous.”

“I’m glad we agree,” Santino snaps back.

“He’s dragging this out to be an asshole.”

“I noticed.”

“So don’t let him,” Flora snaps.

“You were the one who told me to play nice.”

“I told you to get this over with the fast way.” Flora’s eyes light on John and cut back to Santino, hard and sharp. She sets down her mug with a clatter when Santino glares at her. “Don’t give me that look. This is completely unfair and you know it.”

“Oh, you noticed?” Santino says coolly. “As I recall, you were the one ready to pick a fight with Caroline about me doing this. About it being _unfair_.”

“Don’t make me the bad guy,” Flora hisses. “You know where I stand on this. And I’m not just talking about you, you narcissistic prick. Had I known you were going to use John I would have given him something better to do in Sarajevo for another week.”

“ _Use_ John?” John’s not quite sure how he became the subject of the argument. Or what they’re arguing about anymore. Just that Santino and Flora are both pissed.

“Yes,” Flora snaps, her voice equally clipped.

Santino turns to glare at Caroline. “You want to kick up a fight about this too?”

“No,” Caroline replies, her eyes flicking to John for a blink and then back between Santino and Flora.

“I’m sensing a but.”

“But we should close out this little melodrama.”

“I’m glad we agree.”

“Carmine got what he wanted,” Caroline says evenly. “So go back to being heartless and get this over with.”

“Pretty sure that’s the problem,” Flora mutters. Caroline shoots her a look. _Not helping_.

“What do you want, Flora?” Santino snaps. John’s officially lost. Unfortunately, it’s officially too late to make a tactical retreat. “Do you want me to play nice, or do you want to lecture me about being heartless?”

“First of all, they’re two very different things and you know it. Second of all, I want you to not be an Olympic gold medal asshole, which I know to be within your capabilities. Instead we’re stuck dragging this out.”

“I’m handling this as quickly as I can. Carmine isn’t being cooperative.”

“He’s not being cooperative because you were an Olympic gold medal asshole. All of this could have been avoided.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Carmine’s as predictable as gravity,” Flora snaps. “He’s business. You know how to do business with him. And yet here we are.”

“And yet here we are,” Santino replies, returning her icy look.

Caroline leans forward, and they lapse into a three-way silent conversation. John does his best to be invisible. After a minute, Flora leans back with an irritated sigh, Caroline giving her a placating look. John doesn’t miss Flora’s face tightening when Santino leans back into him.

“Someone leave a phone out?” Flora says suddenly, digging a phone out of her pocket to wave in the air. “This looks like yours.”

It takes a second to realize it’s John’s phone, dead and silent and completely forgotten. “Guess I forgot it.”

Flora holds it out, just far enough that John has to shake Santino off to reach her. “Check it. In case you missed something.”

John’s not sure what Flora thinks he might have missed, given that anyone who might try to reach him was already in the apartment. Still, he’s not about to contribute to her annoyance, even if she doesn’t seem to be annoyed with him, so he takes the phone and sets it near his coffee. “I’ll charge it when we go inside.”

Flora and Santino are cool over breakfast and John takes his excuse to be elsewhere. By the time he returns from showering, they seem to have made nice. And yet Flora’s face still flashes with annoyance. It takes most of the morning to figure out that it happens whenever Santino is quietly affectionate with John.

He does get around to charging his phone eventually, when Santino and Flora and Caroline settle into work. It lights up with missed messages as soon as he does. Helen, he realizes. He cut off in the middle of their conversation last night.

It feels odd to open the messages with Santino right there. He answers, at least in part because he’s not in the habit of being an asshole for no reason. But also because, as they text back and forth, it’s pleasantly uncomplicated to be just John in these brief snippets.

He still tucks the phone away when Santino and Flora emerge, if only because they need him to plan some work in a few days. He keeps the conversation going sporadically, when he feels his phone go off and Flora and Santino aren’t paying attention to him. He doesn’t show Flora more art, though. He has a feeling it might not end well, somehow.

He knows Flora notices him, though. And because he’s now settled in work and calmer in the knowledge they’re not going to start arguing again, he doesn’t wait quite long enough when pulling his phone out again as Flora’s attention turns away. He has just enough time to read Helen inviting him to a drink before Flora snatches the phone out of his hands.

Flora coos when she reads the text loud enough for the whole apartment to hear. “Aw, she likes you!”

Tragically, Santino did not go temporarily deaf in the moment it took Flora to steal John’s phone. “She?”

“No one.” John lunges for her, but she throws it across the room at Caroline, who unlocks it as if it’s her own phone.

“The woman who spilled coffee all over him,” Flora tells him, catching the phone when Caroline throws it back at her to type a response, John screeching to a halt in front of Caroline to dive for Flora again. “Helen. From the art gallery you visited the other day.”

“Helen.” John knows that danger tone, but he’s a bit distracted pinning Flora to get the phone out of her hand.

“Yes, she has a name like every other person on the planet,” Flora quips. She tries to hold the phone away, grinning with all her teeth, but John has longer arms. He’s still not fast enough to get it out of her hands before she presses send and locks the phone again.

“A name and your phone number,” Santino says flatly. John doesn’t look yet, just unlocks his phone to find Flora accepted the invitation on his behalf. “Why does she have your phone number?”

“To ask him to get a drink tonight, why else?” Flora smiles brightly up at John when he glares slow and violent death at her.

“Really.” He knows that danger tone. He opts to continue glaring at Flora, since this is entirely her fault.

“Well it’s not like he has plans, does he?” Flora’s smile is hard enough to take an eye out. There’s a real possibility Santino might take her eye out. So John doesn’t stop her when she stands up and marches to his room, but mostly to keep Flora’s eyes temporarily intact. Temporarily being the keyword, because there’s a real possibility he might take her eyes out himself.

“What are you doing?” he hisses at Flora as soon as she closes the door.

“Giving you a night off.” She marches around him to the closet and starts pulling out his clothes one at a time, inspecting them and shoving them back.

“Why did that require an announcement?”

“Would you have taken it otherwise?” Flora holds up a shirt in front of him, looking back and forth between him and the shirt.

He snatches it from her with a glare.

Unfortunately, Flora is used to violent people glaring at her. “John.”

“Flora.”

“You had fun with her. You don’t have plans. So what’s the problem?” When he doesn’t answer, one eyebrow goes up. “It would be awkward to back out now. So just go and have fun. Consider it a free night off.”

She’s right, of course, and for all that John wants to kill Flora with a plastic spoon, he doesn’t actually want to blow off Helen. He still drags Flora out of the room, though, because even if he’s not destined to win this fight, he can choose his battles.

Flora is still incorrigible, which does nothing for Santino’s irritation. She makes a grand show of throwing John out of the apartment and telling him to have fun. John can still feel Santino’s frigid air a full floor away.

He’s three flights down before he remembers Flora looking in irritation between Santino and John when he came back. Flora making sure he had an opportunity to run into Helen again. And now Flora making sure he has a night off in the guise of a date, making sure to piss Santino off in the interim.

John knows Flora likes him—she’s told him so several times to his face, and Flora isn’t the type to play mind games unless she’s also playing politics with a business rival. Then again, liking him and liking the fact that he’s sleeping with her brother are two different things. He thought she was happy about it when she found out, but then, she might have just been giving Santino shit. She certainly went out of her way to make sure Santino is irritated with John when there was no reason for Santino to know about Helen at all, and that’s when she and Caroline were already fighting an uphill battle to make Santino vaguely agreeable.

She doesn’t like Carmine. Carmine is business, both she and Santino said so. John’s not business, at least according to Santino. But Flora is nothing if not a pragmatist about business. Either she doesn’t like John, or she doesn’t like that John got in the way of Santino doing business, whatever else she might feel about business. The net result is the same. Which leaves him with an unpleasant discovery and an equally unpleasant Santino to deal with when he gets back.

So, John does the healthy and responsible thing to do, which is get in the car and drive away from his problems in favor of avoiding his problems with someone who has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Helen looks lovely and lights up the whole street as soon as she sees him. Somewhere in his ribs is a distant twinge of guilt—using Helen to avoid the increasing complication attached to Santino isn’t fair to her. But then, letting himself feel guilty would involve admitting what he’s actually here for, and that would grant Carmine still more power over this. So John shoves the thought away and reminds himself that this isn’t going to be more than a drink. He doesn’t want it to be more than a drink, Flora’s efforts be damned. So John lets himself slip into the easy rhythm of chatting with Helen as they wait for seats to clear at the bar about topics that are pleasantly meaningless.

Except he keeps comparing Helen to Annie Croy. The allusion is just as weak as Heather Moscone—Helen's Italian accent is worlds away from Annie's cool Cockney, Helen's mind populated by small-time artists instead of the ledgers behind Annie's eyes—but it at least makes marginally more sense than Heather. Helen has a fondness for red lipstick (Annie wouldn't be caught dead without red lipstick and a spritz of Chanel No. 5) and Helen's hair is dark, soft waves (Annie's bob is sharp enough to kill a man).

His phone keeps buzzing shortly after they get their drinks, though. And when he digs it out of his pocket to silence it, it rings—Sameen. “Sorry, give me a sec?”

“Sure, take your time.”

“Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone?” Sameen snaps in his ear the moment he picks up.

“I have the night off, remember?”

“Not anymore you don’t,” she sighs. “Everything alright there?”

John blinks, aware of Helen looking at him in confusion. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“Vito Corleone was just gunned down in the street.”

“...fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Is Vito alright?”

“Don’t know yet. We just heard.”

Fuck. John digs his fingers into his eyes, letting out a sigh. “Are you with Santino?”

“We’ve got him secured at Flora’s place with Caroline and Flora. But you need to haul ass over here.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen.” He hangs up and digs his fingers further into his eyes, like if he can scrub them hard enough he’ll rub out the traces of the day.

“...everything okay?”

John takes his fingers off his eyes and finds Helen looking at him in defeat. “Sorry.”

“No, just...” Helen stops herself, then plows on. “Sounds like you’re about to say you have to go.”

Which is roughly when it occurs to John what this looks like. “I’m not…” Except that, too, sounds like an excuse. “Family crisis just came up.”

“I got that sense,” she says, trying and failing to hide her disappointment. “Everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” he says, even though he has the sinking feeling that nothing is fine. “But I have to go. Rain check?”

“No problem.” She sits back in her seat and gives him a small smile, the drink now abandoned in front of her. “Go save the world.”

He doesn’t bother telling her that he can’t save the world because there’s not much world to save and, in any case, that’s not his line of work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was fun! Remember when I said buckle your seatbelts in chapter one? This is the chapter where shit starts happening, so hold on tight, because things only get wilder from here on in. A few notes:
> 
> There's a reason I didn't tag John/Helen, which is that this is NOT a love triangle fic, nor is it that kind of will-they-won't-they. Helen's here for a fun time, not a long time. So if you're not here for John/Helen, don't worry because I'm not either and that's not why Helen is here. 
> 
> For those looking for Easter eggs, San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk is a real Monet which featured in a famous art heist movie, The Thomas Crown Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thomas_Crown_Affair_(1999_film). Technically the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, but it's grand fun as a movie, 10/10 recommend. 
> 
> Santino's apartment is inspired by a very real apartment owned by an Italian interior designer called Livia Rebecchini, with several descriptions lifted verbatim: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/livia-rebecchini-rome-apartment-article. The actual design of the place was inspired by this TriBeCa loft by Monique Gibson, which is where I got the idea for describing a place as not having visual noise and felt immediately like Santino, significantly doctoring the design in my head so as not to magnificently clash with the age of the apartment itself: http://www.moniquegibson.com/featured-projects/tribeca-loft?view=slider. 
> 
> The mural in Santino's apartment is inspired by the one from the movie Made in Italy, which I haven't seen but saw a photo of the mural in this article and knew it belonged in Santino's apartment as Flora's handiwork: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/made-in-italy-is-a-sweet-father-son-home-renovation-story. The other piece of art, Fisher's theory of intertemporal choice, comes from this theory, the process of by which people make decisions about what to do and how much to do at varying points in time, which felt rather fitting as a stage setting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertemporal_choice. 
> 
> There are frequent mentions in this chapter of 'Ndrangheta titles and ranks. Those are real titles and ranks. Here's a fascinating breakdown of how that works: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppm8gb/rules-regulations-and-blood-rituals-0000504-v21n11 and here's a breakdown of how their business runs in real life in case you're curious: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/08/europe/ndrangheta-mafia-raids-analysis-intl/index.html. Also, that quip about the 'Ndrangheta losing millions of dollars rotting in the ground in coffee cans is a real thing apparently overheard by Interpol agents listening in on bugs while mobsters dug coffee cans out of the ground in a forest and reported in the news at the tail end of an article, though for the life of me I can't remember where the hell I read that. Cheers to you if you can find it. 
> 
> Bonus points for those of you who know the Godfather. If you remember the Godfather, you can probably guess some major plot points headed your way based on what just happened to Vito Corleone, though they'll have a different emphasis in this fic than they did in the movie.


	7. the blank space in the mirror staring back at me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family friend asking a favor brings John, Flora, and Caroline to New York, where John discovers that not all roads lead to Rome. Or at least, not East 80th Street. The problem isn't familiarity or unfamiliarity, though. It's the places where this house of mirrors is all too empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaysus Christ has it really been almost a month since I put a chapter up? It's been a time to be alive in America, friends. As a comfort to you, I have about half of every chapter written and maintain three or four complete chapters of wiggle room. You just have to wait a bit for good things. Besides, I'm giving you like, 20k a chapter here. Love me. 
> 
> ANYWAY, have fun with shit starting to hit the fan, John being a little (*cough* a lot *cough*) of a pathetic pining mess, and also being very disoriented in a literal house of mirrors. *cackles* *runs*

It’s not a long drive from the bar to Piazza Mattei. Fifteen, twenty minutes at most. It numbers among the longer twenty minutes of John’s life. He keeps scanning the streets as he goes, as if whoever shot Vito Corleone in New York cut through time and space to step back into reality in Rome, lurking around a dark corner, waiting for the next opportunity. The narrow streets of Rome seem to close around him, more claustrophobic than ever.

John is grateful, not for the first time, that Flora’s parents had enough forethought to buy out the buildings surrounding Piazza Mattei when they decided to live there full-time, and that Massima Rosalia had enough forethought to buy out the apartment building bookending the palazzo on the other side of Piazza Costaguti upon expanding her firm’s offices to live in her brother’s backyard, where Flora’s back gate backs up to open parking. Flora’s front door is surrounded by Camorra holdings—her own business—on all sides, and thanks to Massima’s handiwork, her back door is bookended by her firm on one side and a high-end private apartment building on the other where every resident signs their lease after Caroline vets their ancestors. More importantly, Massima secured the right to secure Piazza Costaguti in a high security gate with cameras and guards. And even so, with Flora’s own employees the only ones allowed inside, Piazza Costaguti is still covered in cameras, Flora’s own back door locked behind a security gate with a passcode and more guards, leaving only a hint of the courtyard beyond the gate, some secret Eden of orange and lemon trees and marble sculptures, visible from the parking lot.

In short, Palazzo Costaguti is a fortress, enclosed and insulated on all sides.

John nods to the guard at the gate and pulls through, seeing Mikkel already waiting for him at Flora’s gate. Her expression is not promising.

“On a scale of one to very,” he says to Mikkel as she lets him through the gate, “how fucked are we?” In Hebrew, in case they’re the kind of fucked that requires preparation before setting foot in a war zone.

Mikkel shrugs, leading him past the staff apartments at the street level and along the edge of the courtyard to trot up the stairs. “Beats me. They made it as far as the downstairs living room before they got on the phone and started arguing in Sicilian.” Like Astrid, Mikkel speaks five languages, of which Sicilian is not one.

“What actually happened?”

Mikkel looks like she’s already tired of this. John suspects it’s going to be the theme of the night. “Some upstart heroin kingpin named Virgil Sollozzo tried to approach Vito about using his political connections to expand his business. Vito said no, and Sollozzo had him shot in the street.”

“That’s an escalation.”

“Enough for a lot of angry Sicilian,” Mikkel replies, pulling open the door.

Sure enough, they’re greeted by a sharp argument in Sicilian the moment Mikkel opens the door to Flora’s living room on the piano nobile level. By the language choice and the snappishness of the tone, it’s Vincenzo Sangallo, the High Table chair for the Cosa Nostra. John doesn’t speak a lick of Sicilian, but it’s abundantly clear that no one is pleased. The bodyguards hover at the periphery grouped loosely around Chiyoh, Flora’s assistant, working on something on her laptop with an admirable poker face while the bodyguards comment to each other in sign language.

Flora glances up at him as soon as he enters the room and pats the seat next to her, so John glides forward and settles on the couch, drinking in Flora’s living room until the Sicilian stops. Flora lives in the two top floors of the palazzo and uses the piano nobile level as an office space for her clients both legal and illegal, which means the living room on this level is as much a showroom as anything else. And while Massima lovingly restored its historical details after the fire that took Flora’s parents, she left the rest for Flora to fill in when she was ready to reclaim her parents’ old home, which means Palazzo Costaguti has historic bones but a character that is distinctly Flora. Which makes the piano nobile level a peculiar animal, including the living room, because it’s Flora tailored to draw people in. On one hand, it’s all bursts of color—the walls Flora’s favorite deep cherry red, the sofa he shares with Flora is ice blue, the couch across from it toffee-colored leather, and the piece Flora commissioned as a divider between the living room and the library of design books taking up the other half of the room is rows of steel bars with sporadically dispersed glass triangles of garnet, gold, and amber. On the other hand, aside from the divider, there isn’t actually any art in the entire piano nobile level—instead, where art ought to be, there are mirrors of every size spanning several centuries and styles from the black and red Moorish mirrors framing the fireplace to the sculptural gilded French mirror above the mantel to the hodgepodge of Venetian mirrors on the wall between each of the windows.

Santino growls the second the phone clicks off. That well, then. “A pleasure as always, Vincenzo.”

“Are you surprised?” Flora says, settling back on the sofa with a sigh.

“No, I’m annoyed.” As if they all couldn’t tell.

“Vito’s the strongest of the five dons in North America. Of course he’s antsy.”

“I noticed.”

Flora snorts. “Fortunately, he’s never in his life been a match for you.”

“You’re sure we have him?” Caroline says, still glaring in irritation at the phone like she’d like to hack Vincenzo through it. Possibly with a hatchet instead of her keyboard.

The side-eye Santino gives her would spook a corpse. Sadly for him, Caroline is dead inside. “You were on the call with me. He’s willing to sit still if I’m willing to make this my problem. And we shut down any risk of the Five Families dissolving into war while jockeying in Vito’s absence.”

“Are you willing to make this your problem?” Flora asks flatly.

“I don’t want to make this Vincenzo’s problem.”

“Not what I asked.”

Santino scrubs a hand through his hair, looking like he’s too sober for this bullshit. “I don’t want to have to manage Vincenzo while holding his hand through cleaning this up, and I certainly don’t want to lose a loyalist at the helm of North America, but even so, this might just be some upstart looking for a skirmish. We don’t know this has anything to do with us.”

“We don’t know it doesn’t either,” Caroline says, still looking at the phone. Now, though, her gaze is contemplative.

Flora tilts her head, raising her eyebrows. She doesn’t sit up, though, because she’s also apparently already tired of this. “You think someone’s making a play?”

Someone, John notes. Not Sollozzo.

Caroline shrugs, nodding to her laptop in her bag. “I have to look closer, but from what I can tell, Sollozzo’s been making the rounds, and Vito’s not the only power player in New York. He could have gone to someone else. He could have even gone to Sonny or Fredo behind Vito’s back. He certainly didn’t need to make a show of gunning Vito down in the street. But he made a show of it anyway.”

“At the risk of getting my attention,” Santino finishes.

“Either way, Gianna’s in New York.” Ah, yes. That. “He had to know we’d send someone knocking just to make sure they don’t look at her. He’s an idiot, but he’s not that stupid.”

Santino looks like he wants to take the head off that idiot for giving him a headache. John knows the feeling. “Even so, you heard Vincenzo.”

“I did.” Loudly.

“And you know how much I hate agreeing with him. The Corleones are loyalists, but they’re not my direct business, and there’s no reason to think this is a High Table concern yet.”

Flora rolls her eyes. “Vincenzo’s a coward and you know it. He has his hands full as it is. He just wants you to clean it up for him so he doesn’t embarrass himself in front of the High Table.”

“Even so,” Santino replies evenly, “if Vincenzo sees no cause for High Table concern, interfering without invitation would send a message that we’re nervous. I don’t want the other Five Families getting bright ideas.” As if on cue, Santino’s phone lights up. He raises his eyebrows at the caller ID and puts it on speaker.

“Evening, Santino.” Sonny Corleone, as they live and breathe. And speaking Italian instead of Sicilian, because there is a god of small mercies.

“Afternoon, Sonny,” Santino replies, all traces of argument vanished from his voice in favor of just the right flavor of concern.

“I’m guessing by that tone I don’t need to share news of my father’s health.” It’s pleasant to be reminded that Sonny is not, in fact, a moron.

“We just heard,” Flora chimes in. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Flora.”

“How is your father?” Caroline says, her chess face in place.

Sonny sighs, apparently unsurprised by the presence of the whole war room. “Being prepped for surgery. Michael and some of ours are with him.”

Sonny didn’t need to tell them that second sentence, and everyone in the room knows it. “You worried someone will try to finish the job?” Flora says, glancing between Santino and Caroline.

Sonny sighs again. “We don’t have a reason to think they won’t.”

“Michael could shoot the wings off a fly at a hundred yards,” Caroline says, not to offer comfort. “He’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well, they took him to the closest hospital and we’re trying not to draw attention to him, but.”

But. Caroline nods, having gotten what she wanted. “If you’d like, we can get a surgeon in and have him transferred to a safe house once he’s stable, post our own security in the meantime.”

“That’s kind of you, thank you.”

It’s not kind and everyone in the room knows it. It’s a sign of the situation they’re in that Sonny’s willing to invite the gesture at all. “I’m guessing you didn’t call just to share bad news,” Santino says, smooth as good poison slipping down the throat.

It’s clearly the invitation Sonny was waiting for. “Last I heard, Gianna’s still in Manhattan.”

“Yes,” Caroline says, continuing when Santino nods. “I planned to visit her next month to check on her ring, but given the situation, I expect I’ll be moving up the visit.”

“Of course,” Sonny says. Steeling himself, John suspects, and sure enough, “Well, if it’s no trouble to you to do without her, Santino, I’d appreciate having Flora in town with Caroline to have a chat with us. For a little while, at least, until we get things sorted with Sollozzo.”

Caroline speaks before Santino has the chance. “I had some work for Flora in New York. I expect she’ll be in town about six weeks at most to finish.” Flora tilts her head, her interest piqued by the promise of fun.

“Well then,” Santino says, glancing between them, “it sounds like I can spare Flora for you for six weeks at most and Caroline for a bit less, if you’re willing to take them off my hands that long.”

“Gladly.” It’s a sign of the situation they’re in that Sonny sounds genuinely relieved. “I appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it,” Flora says, still grinning at Caroline even though nothing comes through her voice other than kind concern. “When do you want us?”

“As soon as you can get away.”

Caroline and Flora share a split-second silent conversation, and then Caroline speaks up. “We can be on a plane tonight by ten.”

“In that case, we’d be glad to have you for coffee as soon as you’re settled. Mother will certainly be glad for the comfort of old friends.”

“We can get there as soon as we land in the morning,” Flora says, for all the world as if she really is concerned to offer comfort to the mother of an old friend, “assuming Carmela will be glad to see us while jet-lagged.”

“We’ll be ready with coffee first thing in the morning, then.”

“Bless your soul, sweetie.”

Sonny laughs. It’s a sign of Flora’s skill that he probably even means it. “Just let me know when you expect to land and text me when you’re on the ground.”

“Done and sold. Go help Michael give the nurses hell.”

“I’ll make calls to arrange everything with Harold,” Caroline says, her phone already in her hand. If John had to bet, she was already talking to Dr. Wren for that purpose.

“Thanks.” Then Sonny is gone.

“There’s your invitation,” Flora says, sinking back into the couch.

“So I heard,” Santino says, glancing at Caroline in faint amusement. “Did you actually have work for Flora in New York, or are you just twisting my arm into bringing her along?”

Caroline snorts, producing a file from her purse. “Financier in the Upper East Side for Goldman.”

Flora brightens immediately. “You want me to work him?”

“He had lunch with Harold twice. Wants to meet with me to talk about investing in the fund.” Caroline pushes the file across the coffee table to Flora with what might be a smile. “Conveniently, he’s also been misbehaving with some of Goldman’s money. Enough for the SEC to start sniffing the air. But he’s smart about his files. Nothing digital.”

Flora picks up the file like it’s the best thing she’s seen all week. “Looks like you’ll need to make introductions.”

“No need.” At Flora’s raised eyebrow, Caroline’s mouth widens into what is almost certainly the smile of a wolf with an unsuspecting rabbit in its reach. “Conveniently, he’s also looking for an interior designer. And has been shopping around your New York office.”

“He know about us?” Flora says, flicking through the file. “Since he went out of his way to seek us both out?”

“He went out of his way to seek me out.” Caroline casts a derisive eye at the file. “He’s shopped around six design firms already and was referred to you after he couldn’t find anyone he liked. Hasn’t committed to anyone in your firm yet because he’s making them all crazy.”

“Aw,” Flora purrs, “I love it when they’re naive. Chiyoh,” she flags Chiyoh over from where she’s definitely working and totally not hiding from the blast radius on the other side of the room, “call Tara and have her get this guy set up for me? I want to meet him as soon as we can manage it.”

“Tomorrow?” Chiyoh asks, already typing on her phone as she takes the file from Flora.

“If we can manage it.” Flora turns back to Santino. “So. How much firepower am I bringing to scare New York into approved misbehavior?”

“Not much,” Santino sighs, glancing at their assembled security who straighten as soon as his gaze lands on them.

“We need to scare them into order.”

“We also need to not look afraid. And you’ll have limited real estate as it is, since Gianna’s already there with a team of four.”

Caroline’s brows raise a centimeter. “You want us in the townhouse?” They have a townhouse on East 80th Street, acquired by Gianni D’Antonio when he founded the hedge fund but used more frequently by Giovanni when he expanded their New York operations and, subsequently, passed the house to Santino upon his death.

“Yes. We’re making a statement as much as anything.” Santino examines the security teams, who make an admirable effort to not wilt. “Take your primary bodyguards. I’ll loan you four boys from the house. Between John, Chiyoh, and the four security already on site, you’ll have plenty to mix and match with. Have Beatrice and Ariadne pull double-duty and add standing security from Flora’s local hands if you need to, but don’t do it until you’re sure you need to. Tell Echo to keep her ears to the ground to avoid any surprises and Beatrice to keep her ears open through her restaurant channels to make sure the Camorra don’t get clever.”

Flora grins and leans into John, hooking her arm through his. “Dibs.”

Caroline is not amused. “We’ll be running thin between babysitting Gianna and getting the Five Families into order.”

“What do you think I’m giving you John for?”

“John should be with you in San Luca.”

Santino snorts. “John’s as good as ten men and you’ll work far faster with him there. He’ll be more useful in New York than he will in San Luca.” From anyone other than Santino, that would sound perfectly reasonable. Except it’s Santino, so John hears a verbal smack in the teeth that says Santino is still _pissed_ about Helen.

“What happened to not showing them we’re scared?” Caroline says, because she does not give a single solitary fuck about Helen.

“What happened to playing nice with Carmine?” Santino returns in a tone that says he’s still pissed about that too.

“He should be with you.”

“What, so he can see Carmine being a shit in his natural habitat?” Flora says, narrowing her eyes at Caroline. John really didn’t expect Flora to be the one rising to argue with Caroline on this. Then again, Helen and driving distance between John and his capacity to distract Santino from business, which revives the sour taste coating John’s tongue.

“Because it’s a bad idea to bring a nuclear warhead to a knife fight,” Caroline snaps. “He can keep Domenico and Carmine in line. And keep Vincenzo from getting a bright idea about coming up from Palermo to talk about North America.”

“You know full well Silvio and Benedetta can referee Vincenzo in Palermo.”

“That’s Palermo. Not San Luca.”

Santino scoffs. “I’m not worried about Domenico and Carmine.”

“I am,” John says quietly. Which he is. Also, he wants to shoot something upon considering the thought of Santino going to San Luca alone with Domenico and Carmine. Specifically Carmine, and Domenico if he can help it.

The look Santino gives him could level Mount Everest. “Despite what you seem to believe, Ares and Sameen did a perfectly respectable job keeping me alive before you got here.”

Before John can respond, Flora lets out a growl, lets go of his arm, and marches up to her brother to haul him by the collar into the dining room, slamming the door behind them. It’s a sign that she really is his sister that Santino doesn’t break her hand. There’s still a hissed argument in French like a bed of angry vipers the second the door slams shut.

Caroline pinches her nose and lets out a long sigh, as she does when the other two-thirds of her are being tiresome. “Do you have clothes at the apartment?”

It takes a minute for John to realize she’s addressing him. “My bag is still there.”

“Suits in good condition? Enough to last a few weeks?”

“Enough for two weeks.”

Caroline nods and releases her nose in favor of diving into her purse to produce a notebook and pen, her business face in place as she scribbles a list. John’s always appreciated Caroline’s sense of focus. “We don’t have time to go back to the house or the apartment, so the boys will have to get your things from your room for you. Where are your passport and house keys?”

That takes a few seconds to register. “My what?”

“Your passport and house keys,” Caroline repeats evenly, thinking for a moment before scribbling. “You still haven’t sold your house. Now’s as good a chance as any.”

John’s not quite sure how he managed to completely forget his house, given how disoriented he was by the comparison to Santino’s house once he first got there, but now that Caroline reminded him, it’s as if she invoked Bloody Mary to stare balefully out of the mirrors. “Both in my desk.”

Caroline nods, sighing and shaking her head as the French arguing picks up volume. She tears out the list and holds it out to him. “Go up to the library and let Doria know what to get from your room. Tell her to have Matteo, Constantine, Davide, and Aristide meet us at the airport within the next hour and a half, tell them to pack for a few weeks of meetings. Call the boys at the apartment to bring your bag here.” She glances in the direction of the closed dining room, where the French arguing continues to pick up volume, then turns to the assembled security. “Frick. Frack.” Caroline’s primary bodyguards. They have actual names. Caroline even knows what they are. She still calls them Frick and Frack out of an inside joke. To their credit, Frick and Frack take it in good humor. “Call Mrs. Ho and have her drive over your supplies from my apartment. Tell her to have Sebastian get my bag ready. Four weeks. Business trip.” Caroline’s deadpan Cantonese housekeeper/cook and her…it’s unclear what Sebastian is, exactly, given that Caroline entrusts him to do damn near anything, just that he was trained as an English butler and is devilishly good at his job and is, as a consequence, entrusted by Caroline to do damn near anything.

“You want Sebastian to pack Yurei to travel?” Frick asks, though he doesn’t look thrilled to ask.

Yurei is Caroline’s cat, a beautiful Khao Manee with brilliantly white fur and eerily intelligent gold eyes like burnished coins. Santino apparently won her for Caroline as a tiny kitten with barely opened eyes a year ago in a rather colorful poker game in Hong Kong, which would help explain how he came into possession of a ten-thousand-dollar kitten from the rarest cat species in the world. John’s fond of Yurei, at least in part because Yurei seems fond of him, but he’s still amazed that Santino loves Caroline enough to let her bring Yurei with her anytime she stays at the house overnight, which is often enough she has her own bowls and cat food and toys at the house, and that Flora loves Caroline enough to modify the panels under the window seats in Caroline’s room to hide Yurei’s toys and litter box from sight. It probably helps that she’s astonishingly well-trained for a cat, both to use her designated scratching posts instead of the furniture and to creep the shit out of visitors while Caroline and Santino negotiate with them. It helps that most visitors take Yurei’s shameless affection for Santino and Caroline (and her tendency to lunge for the eyes of people who insult either of them) as a clear sign that she is, in fact, some kind of vengeful creature of death bound to Caroline by some kind of Satanic ritual. Also, there’s no way Sebastian could keep her coat bright enough to see from the other side of the grave without Yurei being some sort of supernatural entity, no matter how talented he is.

“No,” Caroline replies, though she doesn’t sound happy about it.

“You sure, boss?” Frack asks, though he doesn’t sound happy to push it. “We’re planning on four weeks.” After all, Caroline usually travels with her cat when she can help it, especially for long trips, and more importantly, Caroline is infinitely happier and marginally less terrifying when her cat is around, even if her cat terrifies the staff.

“Between Flora and John and Sonny’s eagerness to put this fire out, I’m hoping it’ll be less than that,” Caroline spares a glance at the rising volume of furious French. “Besides, if one of those fuckers hurt my cat I would have no choice but to send them screaming into hell, and we’re on a peacekeeping mission. We’ll revisit the issue if this ends up taking a while.”

Frick and Frack nod, looking a bit relieved to have a few weeks away from Yurei. In any case, Caroline in a terrifying mood is a better guarantee that this will go faster.

Caroline’s gaze settles on the rest of them. “Mikkel, Astrid, Chiyoh, go get packed. Everyone take what you need to be armed on arrival. Flora will supply the rest when we get to the townhouse.”

It’s as good an excuse as any to get away from the French shouting. They all gladly take it, Mikkel, Astrid, and Chiyoh darting to their apartments, Frick and Frack ducking for cover in one of the sitting rooms slightly removed from the French shouting but within range in case Caroline shouts for them, and John darting up the stairs to Flora’s private quarters, stepping around her housekeeper, Wadsworth, listening at the top of the stairwell. Every step takes him further from the French shouting, and a few doors down, he ducks into the library.

It’s one of the largest rooms on the upper floors, airy and deeply soothing, done in cream and dark wood with bursts of color—here a burgundy and gold Moroccan silk wedding blanket splayed over the back of the sofa, there a pair of deep teal benches under the windows, an Italian pietra dura coffee table with a flurry of malachite butterflies, throughout a collection of small mirrors from all over the world in gold frames set in bookcases full to the brim with books in a dozen languages John can recognize and at least a dozen more he can’t. The art, as it is throughout the top two levels of Flora’s palazzo, consists entirely of language and bodies, gifts from Caroline and Santino so she can keep the other two-thirds of her close—here pages of sheet music from Beethoven and Brahms and Clara Schumann, there a Japanese scroll with swooping lines and a ghostly ink vision of the world tucked between two charcoal and chalk Pierre-Paul Prud’hon studies of nude women, the mantel crowned with a black canvas with swooping gold of every language Flora, Santino, and Caroline share between them (Italian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, French, coding languages, mathematics, musical notes) set behind a small marble figure of the veiled Psyche on her silent quest to Proserpina. Also, much like Flora’s room in Santino’s house, there are several pieces from Flora’s collection of skulls, ranging from a Vehmic court oath skull to a Mexican Day of the Dead skull to an 18th century Flemish skull tucked in a window seat to startle an unsuspecting reader.

Better still, it’s blessedly quiet, far enough removed from Santino and Flora arguing and at enough of a distance from the bustle on the piano nobile to be lulling. John checks the list Caroline gave him, does a mental tally, and starts making phone calls. Doria is disappointed to learn she won’t be getting them back for a while and orders John to take care of himself as well as he takes care of Flora and Caroline, repeating the list back to him and calling out orders even as she hangs up. The security boys at the apartment are easy enough, since he thought they would be going back to the house anytime and, as a consequence, never quite got around to unpacking. All they really need to do is grab the few scattered essentials, throw them in John’s bag with the rest, and show up at Flora’s door, which they promise to do in the next fifteen minutes.

Then, suddenly, it’s not quiet, because there are footsteps outside and Flora flinging the door open.

“There you are,” Flora says brightly, throwing Santino into the room by his collar like an angry cat. “Kiss and make up.”

“Fuck off, Flora,” Santino hisses, very much like an angry cat.

Flora is not impressed. “You can apologize and get on with being gross on your own terms or I can hold you at gunpoint. And I have many guns to point. Your choice.” Because apparently she ran out of subtlety around the same time she ran out of fucks.

They both glare at her, which is apparently good enough, because Flora pulls the door shut loudly behind her, leaving the two of them alone.

Santino looks like he wants to go to the piano in the corner, for something to do with his hands and also to throw the music in John’s face. He doesn’t, because it would also be hiding, and John doesn’t offer him the out, because he refuses to give Santino the satisfaction.

“According to Flora,” Santino says crisply, “I’m being an asshole.”

“That is not an apology,” Flora shouts from the other side of the door.

“Fuck off, Flora.”

“Gunpoint,” she shouts back.

Santino’s sigh through his nose says he’s not the one about to be held at gunpoint, but he loosens his shoulders and looks at John. “Flora told me about her little campaign.”

“Then you know I didn’t want any part of it.” Which won’t stop Santino from holding it against him, being a veteran petty bastard and all.

A little bit more fight seeps out of Santino’s shoulders, so that part, at least, made it through. “Flora also reminded me I was an asshole for throwing you in Carmine’s face.”

“Just a bit.” More than a bit, but then, John doesn’t actually want to fight with Santino, certainly not about Carmine and certainly not when he’s about to leave for New York for a few weeks.

Santino sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know those words were in your vocabulary,” John says, mostly out of shock at feeling the world shift a full three inches to the left.

“Shut up.”

And there’s the Santino he knows. “I’m sorry Helen got thrown in your face.”

“Yeah, well,” Santino glares at the door like he means to set it on fire, “that wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s the spirit,” Flora calls.

“Fuck off, Flora,” John calls by way of thank you. It’s unclear what she yelled at him in French, but he’s beginning to suspect black magic was involved.

Santino snorts and, after a moment’s consideration, walks up to him. “Seems you’re off to New York.”

“Seems like.”

Santino sighs, resting his forehead against John’s shoulder. “Fuck this.”

“With an Arizonian cactus,” John agrees, ignoring Flora’s snickering.

“Flora will probably have to stay the whole six weeks. Depending on the situation, we might have you and Caroline back in three or four.”

Sounds like he’s going after all. John resists the impulse to repeat _fuck this_. “You think it’ll be that big a mess?”

“Hell if I know,” Santino grumbles into his shoulder. “I have faith in Sonny to more or less have his shit together. Depends on how irritating Sollozzo is.”

“And Gianna.”

Santino scoffs. “Gianna’s running an art ring. She’ll be fine.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her.” Because Gianna theoretically shouldn’t have been able to get up to that much trouble while in school in Paris, and yet. German politician’s son, irritatingly well-stocked in Ukrainian guns.

“Much obliged.” Santino turns his head to nuzzle into John’s neck. “Well, then. Seems you’ll be gone for a while.”

“Seems like.” John presses against Santino to soak in as much heat as he can, suddenly aware of how very long three to four weeks feels.

“And I’d rather not leave on a sour note.”

John hums. “Glad we agree.”

Santino laughs in his ear and pulls back to kiss him.

Of course that’s when the door opens, Flora leaning through looking entirely too smug for her own health. “ _There’s_ the kissing and making up.”

“ _Fuck off, Flora_ ,” they shout at the same time.

Flora just grins, damn her. “Aaaand we’re back.” She holds out a hand, wiggling her fingers. “Much though I’d love to let you assholes be disgusting and force me to get my couch cleaned, we’re on a tight schedule and Santino needs to give Vincenzo his lines in this little drama.”

Santino’s face says exactly what he thinks of their tight schedule, Vito Corleone be damned.

Which gives John the perfect opportunity to catch Santino off guard and kiss him, dirty and with tongue, ignoring Flora’s wolf-whistle.

“What’s that for?” Santino says, breathless and leaning in when John breaks away.

“Something to miss me by while you’re in San Luca with your shitbird ex,” John says as he steps back.

“You’re such an _asshole_ ,” Flora keens with delight, holding out her arm. “I’m stealing you more often.”

John turns toward her, half to tell her to fuck off and half to step toward her to make his point. And Santino, being a bird of a feather, shoves him backward into the bookcase and kisses him like he wants to fuck him standing up with his sister standing right there, arching to grind a hip between John’s legs, one hand gripping his hair hard enough to pull it out and the other gripping John’s hip hard enough to leave a purple handprint behind.

Then Santino breaks away from him and straightens with a prim smile, smoothing his hair out. “Something to miss me by while you’re in New York all by your lonesome.”

God.

Damn.

_It._

“Yes, you’re both disgusting,” Flora groans, marching into the room to haul them both out by the elbow. “Let’s go.”

They land in New York around six in the morning, dressed for business and greeted by two local security from the townhouse waiting with two burly black cars that look like they might survive a close encounter with a tank. Also with news that Michael Corleone prevented a man from killing Vito in his hospital bed last night minutes before Caroline’s muscle showed up to transfer Vito to a safe house.

“Give the keys to John,” Caroline orders them in lieu of hello, tucking a comm in her ear without looking at them. John knows, intellectually, that Caroline is American, hears it in her accent every time she speaks Italian. But he’s only ever heard her speak Italian, so hearing her speak English is as bracing as being dropped in a pool of ice.

“You worried we’re in for a car chase?” Flora says after she hangs up the phone with Sonny, looking unhappy about the prospect. It’s equally disorienting to hear Flora’s warm Italian transformed into an Italian accent while speaking English, still warm but undoubtedly not Italian. They are, in all ways, no longer in Rome.

“No,” Caroline replies, flagging Frick and Frack to follow her, “I want to make it to Staten Island at a reasonable hour so we can eat breakfast at home.”

Apparently Flora can’t argue with that, so she takes the keys and tosses them to John. “Hope you’re not the type to get hives in the suburbs. 120 Longfellow Ave, Staten Island.”

Caroline takes the front seat beside him, Flora sandwiched in the backseat to touch up her makeup between Mikkel and Astrid while Frick and Frack clamber to the back row with Chiyoh tucked between them. That still leaves the rest of the security team to make it work in the other car. They’re clearly glad not to be in the car with Caroline, though John doesn’t quite know why—like Santino, Caroline ignores people unless she has something to say and makes it quite clear when she wants them to fuck off. It feels wonderfully straightforward to John, though he knows even Frick and Frack find it unnerving. 

In any case, he doesn’t have to keep conversation in the hour it takes to drive from JFK to the Corleone compound in Staten Island.

Flora, he notes, produces a gold cross on a thin chain from her purse when they pull up and puts it around her neck, though she seems to be resisting the urge to itch where the chain lies. Still, her face is carefully bright when she steps out of the car and strides with Caroline to knock on the front door.

“Flora!” Sonny says as he opens the door, his face lighting up.

Flora grins and holds out her arms. “Hi, sweetie.”

“You here to finally have some fun?” he says, pulling her into a hug.

“Not even on your birthday,” she replies easily.

“Kill my dreams, why don’t you?” he answers without missing a beat, letting her go to smile at Caroline standing in the doorway like a specter in slate gray. “Morning, Caroline.”

“Sonny.” John has the distinct feeling that Sonny doesn’t quite know what to do with Caroline, but then, most people don’t know what to do with an empty mirror. “How’s Carmela?”

“We can hardly separate her from Mass,” Sonny sighs, separating from Flora. “She’s beside herself.”

“That reminds me,” Flora’s hand dives into her purse and produces a small drawstring bag, which she drops in Sonny’s hand. “It’s not much, but hopefully it’s a comfort to her.”

He reaches into the bag and withdraws a rosary with deep blue beads and beautifully crafted gold crucifix. “It’s beautiful, Flora. Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do.” A small silver tabby trots out into the hall, scooped up by Flora as soon as it demands to be picked up. “But for the big statements of tender love and care, we’re going to need to get comfortable.”

Of course, that’s around the time Sonny notices John. They’ve never directly interacted, but Sonny clearly knows who he is. And his reputation precedes him. “I didn’t know you were bringing Mr. Wick.” An invitation to an explanation, and Sonny unsubtly saying he doesn’t want John in his house.

“Santino sent him with us,” Flora says, gesturing with her head for John to step inside. Her arms are still occupied by the cat.

“Does he think it’s necessary?” Sonny says, not stepping out of the way.

“We insisted,” Caroline says, for all the world as if Santino and Flora didn’t twist her arm into it. “We have work to do, and it will go much faster with John here. And in any case, Santino wouldn’t hear of sending his business partners without the best,” she tilts her head, her gaze daring Sonny to challenge her, “given the uncertainty of the situation we find ourselves in.”

They stare each other down. Then Sonny turns to John, John keeping his face deliberately blank as he does. It’s easy enough, given that he hasn’t had coffee yet.

Flora shifts her grip on the cat to catch Sonny’s elbow, breaking the five-second staring match. “We’ve got work to do, sweetie,” she says with the faintest hint of reproach. “And if you want us doing it for you, John’s coming.”

Sonny nods and steps back, though he doesn’t look greatly pleased about it, and gestures for them to follow. The war room is waiting for them in the living room, and consists of Sonny, the youngest Corleone brother, Michael, and Vito’s consigliere, Tom Hagan. A surprisingly thin crowd, if Caroline’s look is anything to go by, but Flora’s the one who speaks up.

“Not that I don’t adore Corleones 1, 3, and 4, but shouldn’t we be doing this with the whole gang?” Flora asks as she drops into the sofa beside Caroline, setting the Corleone cat in her lap. “Where’s Fredo?”

“Out in Vegas,” Sonny replies as he sits. “It’ll be just Michael and Tom and I.”

Flora quirks an eyebrow, her hands still in motion to turn the Corleone cat to putty. “You worried about someone coming for him too? You must have shipped him out almost as soon as we heard about it.”

“He was already in Vegas managing the business interests,” Tom says, a bit too quickly. “Got sent out about a two months ago.”

“Shouldn’t he be called back?” Michael says quietly. “He should be with Father now.”

Sonny’s not quite smooth enough to hide the flash of displeasure at Michael speaking out of turn in front of company. “He’ll be safer out there anyway. Last thing we need is to lose our grip on Vegas while Sollozzo’s gunning for us.”

“You worried about Vegas?” Flora asks, glancing up from the cat. Fishing.

Sonny knows it too. “I don’t want to be worried about Vegas,” he replies evenly, handing her and Caroline each a cup of coffee. “Besides, we’ve been looking to expand our interests in the casinos and it’s good to have a family face out there.”

John thinks Caroline’s mouth tightens, but it’s slight enough that it might be his imagination. “I thought you were going back to school, Michael? Taking advantage of GI benefits?”

Michael isn’t as unsettled by Caroline as his brother, but then, he projects a rather different air than his brother. Something calmer, quieter, if not necessarily more patient. “I was. Until I heard my father was shot.”

“And thank God for it,” Flora says, tilting her head as Michael turns to look at her. “What with the news we heard when we landed. Looks like Sollozzo wanted to finish the job after all.”

“Seems so,” Michael says, regarding her with the same detached eye he turned on Caroline.

Caroline sips her coffee just long enough to let Flora get a read on Michael. Then she sets down the coffee and she’s off. “You wanted us here, Sonny,” she says, crossing her ankles with her business face on. Which does not stop her from playing with the Corleone cat with one hand. “Why?”

“Down to business, then?” Sonny sets down his coffee, though, because they are, in fact, here for business. “I want to pull money from the fund. Five million.”

He is, after all, talking to the woman with the keys to the bank vault. “Why?”

“Because I want to crush this fucker out.”

One of Caroline’s brows quirks a centimeter. The Corleone cat _mou_ s for her attention, earning an absent stroke for its trouble.

Sonny sets his jaw. Tom speaks for him before he puts his foot in it. “We don’t have the liquidity. If I pull from our funds now we’ll be handicapped in Vegas and Chicago.”

“And we can’t afford to take this fucker on half-cocked, with his network he can draw this out just long enough to let the other Families take advantage,” Sonny finishes.

“No,” Caroline says, staring at Sonny unblinking. It’s kind of impressive, how still she can hold herself while coaxing purring out of the Corleone cat.

Sonny clearly wasn’t expecting a no that fast, because he blinks at Flora, who puts one palm up in a white flag gesture. The other is still scratching the Corleone cat’s chin. “Don’t look at me, sweetie, I’m here to stop a war, not start one.”

“I’m not looking to start one either,” Sonny says, turning back to Caroline. “But Sollozzo might be.”

“Much though I’ve always appreciated your propensity for violence, Sonny,” Caroline says evenly, “there’s something to be said for restraint.”

“We’ve kept a lid on things for you these last twelve years. We can keep doing that now. But we can’t if he kneecaps us, and we can’t afford restraint if he’s out to kneecap us.”

But Caroline isn’t listening. She’s staring into the middle distance with her head tilted toward the side, the side with the comm in it. Her lips twitch, and she reaches into her pocket to withdraw her phone and withdraw her hand from the Corleone cat’s ears so she has both thumbs free to tap something out.

“Are we keeping you from something?” Michael says, cool as an ice pick.

“No,” Caroline replies, answering her phone almost before it rings with one hand running over the cat’s back. “Good morning, Harold, how are you today?” Dr. Harold Wren, Caroline’s former mentor at MIT who now manages the fund’s affairs as Santino and Caroline’s New York representative.

Pause. The Corleone brothers glance at each other.

“Yes, I’ll take the meeting.”

Pause. The Corleone brothers glance at Flora, who looks entirely too innocent to actually be innocent. The cat paws Flora’s hand, leaning into her palm when she presents it while cooing in Sicilian.

“No, I’m busy now, and no, I don’t want him in the office. Tell him to come to the house tomorrow at nine sharp.”

Pause. Caroline’s mouth widens into a smile that will probably end badly for someone. 

“Then have Mr. Reese give him my best while showing him out the door. And give Mr. Reese my best, would you? Get your marching orders ready to execute. I’ll call when we’re done here.” She smiles at the Corleones as she hangs up. “That was Dr. Wren.”

“So I gathered,” Sonny says, his voice saying what he thinks about gathering it. “May I ask what meeting was so important that you had to agree to take it while in the middle of this one?”

“Virgil Sollozzo,” Caroline replies cheerfully, running a hand up the cat’s tail.

Sonny face hardens immediately. “To be clear, you just agreed to take a business meeting with the man who just tried to kill my father, in my house, in which you sit on my invitation to ask for your support in killing the man who just tried to kill my father?”

“Yes.” Caroline settles back against the couch, her smile still in place and one hand scratching the cat’s ear. “I told you, Sonny, that while I appreciate your propensity for violence, there’s something to be said for restraint.”

“Then I think you had best explain what you mean when you say restraint,” Michael says, fixed on Caroline with a sniper’s gaze.

“Sollozzo’s a small fry idiot,” Flora says, not blinking when Michael’s sniper gaze settles on her. It’s kind of impressive that Flora can stare him down while her hands still work over the cat so it leans into her. “He timed this. He knew one of us would come. He’s not big enough or stupid enough to think he’s David facing Goliath, and if this is a power play, he’s not smart enough or well-resourced to come up with a power play like this on his own.”

“Restraint, Michael,” Caroline says, cool as the frostbite, “is understanding that this isn’t the kind of war you’re accustomed to fighting.” Her gaze flicks to Sonny. “I don’t want Sollozzo. I want his backer. So yes, I took the meeting. And no, we won’t bankroll a war.”

“We will put one down, though,” Flora adds, picking up the cat to readjust its stance on her lap. “Which is in your interest, by the way. As far as Vincenzo is concerned, you’re not his problem until you are, and when you are, he’ll come with tanks to flatten you in the name of the Covenant.”

“We’re not about to break the Covenant in open war,” Tom says, because he’s Vito’s consigliere for a reason, namely his capacity to dump water on diplomatic fires. 

“You don’t intend to,” Caroline replies, running a thumb over the cat’s head so it opens its eyes to trot over to her, “but the thing about war is that you don’t know how it will shake out. Especially when you go into it on a revenge mission. And if Vincenzo comes, he won’t care about your reasons. He’ll come to crush you, and the High Table will let him. Including Santino.”

Tom gestures to the room, at who is conspicuously absent. “Vincenzo isn’t here.”

“Do you think that’s accidental?” Flora says, snapping her fingers to get the cat’s attention away from Caroline and dart her fingers nimbly away to draw the cat into a game. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Vincenzo is willing to stay out of this so long as it’s dealt with quietly. And then only because he knew you invited us.” Caroline lies so well she almost has John convinced that’s what actually happened. It’s to their benefit that Vincenzo will be quite willing to gift wrap this as Santino’s problem on the off-chance the Corleones happened to call him and check. Which is approximately a snowball’s chance in hell.

Tom stares her down. Caroline stares back. After a moment, he sighs. “We can try to handle this quietly, but the rest of the Five Families might not be willing to listen.”

“I don’t know or care whose cornflakes you pissed in,” Flora says, settling the cat on her lap with both hands to rub up and down its back. “But like I said,” she grins, already looking excited about it, “I’m here to stop a war, not start one.”

“We’ll get the other Five Families in line to give you an opportunity to re-negotiate your terms with Sonny at the helm,” Caroline says, one hand stroking the cat to work up a purr, “and we’ll get Sollozzo on a leash to negotiate your terms of cooperation.”

Michael looks at her with flat eyes and speaks before Tom or Sonny can shut him up. “How?” John has a sneaking suspicion Sonny will shred him for speaking out of turn as soon as they leave.

Caroline stares at him like he’s the idiot stepchild. Flora just snorts a laugh. “Pro tip, sweetie: do your homework before showing up to class.”

In translation: fuck off.

“We can work with that,” Sonny says before Michael can say something that might require Sonny to kneecap him later. “You should know Sollozzo has the Tattaglias’ support. They’re the ones who set up the meeting with Vito behind closed doors.”

“I know,” Caroline says. She wasn’t working half the night on the plane for nothing. “But I appreciate your honesty. We’ll deal with the Tattaglias accordingly.” A sunny smile appears on her face that looks eerily out of place there. A reminder that the Corleones will be dealt with accordingly if they neglect to continue being honest. The cat is still purring into her hand.

Sonny and Tom study John. He stares back at them blank-faced, which is easy enough, given that he’s here for the express purpose of unnerving them and also he didn’t sleep that much on the plane. If he had to guess, they’re trying to reconcile Nicky Moscone with Flora being here to stop a war.

He’s not sure what conclusion Sonny reaches, but apparently he decides if anything close to what happened to Nicky Moscone happens to Sollozzo, he’ll be quite alright with that. “Much obliged.”

“Well then,” Flora says brightly, setting the cat down so she can stand, tugging John up with her to loop her arm in his, looking back at the Corleones with a cheerful smile. Making a point, even if it looks like a kitten cuddling up to the Doberman of their worst nightmares. “We’ve got things to do and a little sister to check on. Plus,” she nods to Caroline, unfolding from the sofa like the queen herself, “we’ve got a very important date with a talented woman and a stove on East 80th Street that this one’s been dreaming about since ten last night.”

Sonny laughs, standing up to see them out. “I won’t keep you from breakfast then.”

“Keep us informed,” Caroline says as they walk to the front door. A tug on Sonny’s collar, not a request. “We’ll make arrangements.”

“Of course. Let us know how we can repay the service,” Sonny says, opening the door for them, apparently content with his deal with the devil.

Flora lets go of John just long enough to stand on her toes and hug Sonny lightly. “Don’t be a stranger. You know where to find us.”

“We’ll check in shortly,” Sonny promises.

“And take care of your poor mother.”

“All I ever do,” he replies, the door clicking shut behind them as they step out into the early morning air.

“That went well,” John murmurs as they walk to the car.

“One thing I appreciate about Sonny,” Flora replies, leaning into John as they walk, “he’s always willing to dance when he thinks the tune is in his favor.”

“And now that the soldiers are in order,” Caroline says, pulling the car door open, “we have work to do.”

“116 East 80th Street, Upper East Side,” Flora says from the back, where she’s already typing on her phone.

Not staying in the Continental is as much a power move as staying in the Continental is a practical one. And they are, after all, here to make power moves. So John starts the car and puts in a route for 116 East 80th Street. Then, upon closer consideration, "What are we going to do with the cars?"

Caroline stares at him like it's the stupidest question she's heard all year. Flora just giggles, unclipping the cross from around her neck to drop it into her purse. "Spoken like a true New Yorker. Just drive. We've got a place for them."

He doesn't bother to correct her that he's not a native New Yorker, nor does he remind Caroline that between the collected security they’ll be lucky to find enough parking within five blocks, regardless of whether he can park this car in front of the townhouse to let Caroline and Flora out. He just starts driving, figuring that out of all the damn miracles in the world, parking on East 80th Street in Manhattan would be the coup cementing Flora’s name as legend.

An hour later, he discovers he is, in fact, in the presence of a legend.

There are two empty spaces in front of the townhouse, marked with RESERVED TRESPASSERS WILL BE TOWED painted on the street and signs flanking the tree set in the sidewalk. Those are for visitors, as Caroline informs him when they turn on the block with the faintest whiff of derision. Flora overtook an alleyway next to the townhouse and put in a covered garage entrance running alongside the ground level, letting out in a garage behind the house. There are two empty spaces waiting for them among two more burly black cars and a black Charger perched in the corner where Flora’s takeover of the alleyway ends.

And when he meets Flora’s eye in the rearview mirror, meaning _how many laws did you b_ _reak_ _for this,_ Flora just beams, radiating smugness.

“Come on. I’m starving.” Caroline steps out of the car with what might be impatience by Caroline standards.

“Awww,” Flora coos, “you did miss Beatrice’s cooking.”

Caroline pushes her way through the door without reply.

The door lets out in a living room, which is more than a bit disorienting. Still more disorienting is seeing windows and trying to reconcile space with the garage John knows sits on the other side of the wall. It takes a second to recalibrate and realize that they’re not windows but mirrors, casting diffuse light back into the room from the window in the entry hall beyond the living room doorway, hiding the garage beyond and giving the room the illusion of natural light and depth.

“These used to open to the back garden,” Flora tells him, ushering the security boys through the door. “But given the amount of people coming and going and the number of cars, I raised the garden to the second floor. Plus,” she pulls the door shut behind her with a grin, “it leaves all three of our offices without easy sight lines.” The door doesn’t look like a door at all, but rather a large mirror in a heavy frame matching the one on the other side of the room, as if the space behind it doesn’t exist.

“For which we are eternally grateful,” Caroline says over her shoulder, beckoning for them to follow her up the stairs. The second floor is bathed in light, even the kitchen in the back corner—apparently, when Flora raised the garden, she modified it to wrap around side of the house and cover the entire garage up to the entrance letting out at the sidewalk, displayed by the glass doors wrapping around the back wall and the corner of the kitchen. The stone and the greenery through the glass is serene, if spatially disorienting—the garden’s backdrop is startlingly green because the garden walls only leave the tops of the neighbors’ trees visible over the panels of antiqued mirror making up the garden’s entire back wall.

“How many laws did you break for this?”

“Break is such a strong word. I prefer bend,” Flora says as she breaks away from hugging Beatrice at the stove to hug a blonde woman seated at the counter who John can only assume is Tara, if only because of the files and house photos spread out in front of her. That would leave Echo and Ariadne setting out plates at the table, who John can only identify as two different people and not a reflection or a trick of the light because Caroline addresses them each by name. They’re so thoroughly identical, from their braided shocks of white blonde hair down to the maze tattoo sleeves peeking out from their shirt sleeves to the way they set plates on the table, that it takes a moment to realize with relief that their black clothes aren’t actually identical—Ariadne has a black maid’s uniform similar to Yvette’s, while Echo looks like she’s preparing to work in the back garden. John could swear he recognizes the maze tattoo sleeves, but he couldn’t say from where.

He shakes his head and turns back to Flora. “Even for you, this is impressive bending.”

Flora grins at his confusion, dragging him to sit at the kitchen table next to her while she drops to sit at the head of the table, hugging Echo and Ariadne in turn. “Suffice to say that the City Planning Commissioner’s wife was quite pleased with her new house.”

“Almost as pleased as the Commissioner when we made a corruption investigation against him disappear,” Caroline adds, settling at the kitchen table on John’s other side with her laptop open and her notebooks spread out.

“And speaking of houses.” Flora turns to sit sideways in her chair toward Tara, her coffee balanced in her hands. “I can see the gears spinning. What have the masses got for me?”

Apparently that’s Tara’s cue to pepper Flora with projects both legal and illegal, including a Dutch couple in the East Village adamant that they want her. It doesn’t seem to matter that Flora already has a client lined up or that her New York team is quite capable of managing on their own. The legal and illegal staff all want her opinions and her help, either because the clients are infuriating or because the New York team wants a chance to impress her. Flora has none of it, but especially not the Dutch couple.

“I don’t do minimalists,” Flora says with a scowl that says exactly what she thinks of the matter. John wonders what she would think of his house. “Send them to Annabelle.”

“You did my apartment,” Caroline says without looking up from typing.

“First of all, you’re not a minimalist, you just don’t accumulate crap unless it means something to you. Second of all, I like you.” Flora glances at the client details spelled out on the file Tara holds in front of her and curls her lip in disgust. “They’re minimalists with 2.5 children under the age of five. And they like white.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Tara hides her laughter in her coffee and changes the subject. She makes a lot more headway when she switches over to the client Flora intends to take and presents Flora with her handiwork of the night, the file on the financier. Flora cackles the moment she lays eyes on the photos, though John’s not quite sure what about them is so funny to her—the house looks like a townhouse to him, though whoever worked on it before didn’t have the good sense to counterbalance its darkness and narrowness. Tara’s handiwork runs deeper than the house, though. She already has blueprints which look to be from the Continental help desk, including specs on the financier’s security system and safe. She also has a workup of the finer details of his life, including his four-year-old daughter. To John’s surprise, Flora immediately says she wants the daughter in the meetings. Not to Tara’s surprise, though—she already requested that the financier bring his daughter to meet with Flora this afternoon, to which he agreed.

Tara is also impressively unfazed when Flora tells her that she’ll only be in town for a month and a half to complete the project, a generous window of time for her to douse fires as Santino’s enforcer but a whirlwind for the full overhaul the financier has in mind. Nor does she seem at all surprised by Flora’s boundless energy, as if she woke up this morning from the best night’s sleep of her life and already downed a pot of coffee. John doesn’t know where the hell she gets it from, just that Flora has so much of it that she never quite sits still. She’s like this every time he’s ever met her, and the flight from Rome doesn’t even scratch its surface. Still, he supposes it’s a good thing—Flora’s endless energy is part of her magnetism, an exploding star reeling in every body within reach as opposed to Santino’s subtle and steady gravitational pull.

Where Flora is a constant tide of vibrating energy, Caroline is a bottomless well. She spends thirty minutes on and off the phone with her associates while Beatrice prepares breakfast, a network of camorristi launderers and less-than-legal finance suits responsible for putting the pressure on Sicilian money operations as part of Caroline’s citywide asset freeze. They all repeat the same thing (this will go over like a bomb in church) and Caroline always replies the same thing (that’s the whole point). Her fingers rarely stop moving across her keyboard, an occasional nod her only sign of satisfaction. She doesn’t look up from her work until thirty minutes later, around when Beatrice finishes food.

“We good?” Flora says, turning away from Tara and Chiyoh mid-sentence.

“Consider New York the new Antarctica,” Caroline replies, standing from her chair to get more coffee.

“How long can you keep it on ice?”

“Until the Five Families grovel on their knees.”

“Now that’s just sexy talk,” Flora purrs. “Don’t taunt me like that.”

“Weirdos,” a voice calls from the door—Gianna, apparently fresh out of bed.

“ _You_ ,” Flora crows in a tone that sends a security guy a foot in the air, pointing a finger at Gianna like she means to take an eye out. “I need a _word_.”

“I’ll even give you ten.”

“Ten, she says,” Flora mutters to Chiyoh in disbelief, throwing her hands out to gesture to the house. “Look at this place! Explain yourself.”

Gianna raises an eyebrow. “Still standing, isn’t it?”

“ _Still standing_ ,” Flora huffs, a hand to her heart. “It’s fucking _pristine_. You’re twenty-one, for fuck’s sake. Where are the drugs and the hookers? I keep this city stocked in excellent pharmaceuticals for a _reason_.”

“The hookers come by after tea,” Gianna retorts. Matteo makes an admirable effort not to laugh. It helps that Caroline is looking in his general direction.

“Classy. That’s my girl.” Flora holds out her arms. “Hugs.”

“Missed you too,” Gianna says as Flora wraps herself octopus-style around Gianna’s waist before giving her a push in the direction of the chair to her left, across the table from John.

“How’s Flora’s ring?” Caroline says, tapping a key to wake up her laptop and folding herself back into her seat to stare at Gianna with a flat gaze that clearly unnerves the security guy perched against the wall behind her, if his scurrying is any indication.

“Still the life of the party?” Gianna replies as if she expected it. “Business is booming.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“One of these days, Caroline, I’ll steal you the damn _Mona Lisa_ and we’ll see you try and keep a straight face _.”_

“Get me a Sesshū Tōyō and then we’ll talk,” Caroline says primly.

“How’s _Haboku sansui_?”

“I can be convinced.”

Gianna grins. “Check your room.” Then her gaze swings to John. “Morning.”

“Morning.” It’s disorienting to look at Gianna, in that she looks quite a lot like Santino but is several shades off. Especially her eyes, which are a completely different shade of blue and yet eerily familiar in a way John can’t place.

“How are you finding the place?”

Disorienting, but John has the good sense not to say so. “Different.”

Gianna laughs. “It’s not the house in Rome, but it has its perks.” She tilts her head to one side, studying him. “I didn’t think Santino would send you.”

“Well we couldn’t have too much fun without him, could we?” Flora says cheerfully, sending a sunny smile John’s way.

“I didn’t think Santino would send you and miss out on seeing the fun for himself,” Gianna amends.

“Santino has errands in San Luca,” Caroline says, still scribbling something in her notebook.

“Let me guess,” Gianna says drily, not looking away from John, “Carmine?”

John doesn’t answer, but then, he doesn’t need too. Flora, Caroline, and Gianna all exchange a look and roll their eyes at once. It’s rather satisfying.

“In any case,” Caroline says, returning to her laptop, “we need to get the Five Families in order. John’s here to help.”

“I heard about Vito.” John wonders if the entirety of New York was involved in a game of telephone yesterday. Then again, biggest small town in the world. “Terrible thing. Is Vincenzo coming?”

“No.”

Gianna doesn’t look surprised by that. Or disappointed. “Vito’s the strongest of the Five. I’m surprised he doesn’t want to be here to stop a shakedown.”

“What do you think we’re here for?” Flora says. She still looks excited about it.

“To babysit me, I assume,” Gianna replies tartly.

“Got it in one.”

Gianna flops back in her seat with an eye roll, a movement that reminds John how young she actually is. “Let me guess, you’re taking my ring back and I win extra chaperones?”

“What am I, the fun police?” Flora quips, looking offended at the suggestion.

“We’re not nervous yet and we need to look it,” Caroline says, not looking up from her screen. “You can keep Flora’s ring running for now.”

“With babysitters,” Gianna says flatly.

“Dangerous times.” Flora says it with such solemnity it half succeeds in masking her delight.

Gianna’s eerily familiar eyes settle on John again looking suddenly eager. “Can I at least nominate my babysitters?” They shouldn’t be familiar—John saw her for a grand total of five minutes when he first met her in Paris, which was the time it took Flora to introduce them, march into Gianna’s apartment, and give him orders to stop an international incident, and he spent the entirety of Constanza’s wedding at the periphery, never less than ten feet away from her. They’ve never exchanged more than two sentences, never mind held a conversation. And yet, her eyes are eerily familiar in a way that slips away from him as soon as he inches toward it, and it sets his teeth on edge that he can’t figure out what about them is so immediately familiar.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Flora says, sounding not at all sorry. “He’s here helping us work.”

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

“We’re here to work because Vito Corleone was shot in the street,” Caroline says, finally looking up from whatever she’s typing. “He’ll be busy.”

“What, do you think Sollozzo’s going to stand outside the front door and shoot up the place if you step out the door without John? Let the man have some culture for a change.”

“I resent that,” Flora says, her eyes narrowing despite her grin. “I have plenty of culture. Russian, Ukrainian, German, Austrian, Colombian.”

“Not guns,” Gianna clarifies. Then, on second thought, “Or drugs.”

“Bo-ring,” Flora sings.

“I did tell Santino I’d keep an eye on her,” John says to Flora, because he actually did and she was even there to hear it. And Santino would probably be upset if his little sister got hurt.

Flora rolls her eyes, poking him in the arm fondly. “You did, because you’re a good person.”

John’s really not, but it’s not the point, so he doesn’t bother correcting her.

“We’ll be checking in,” Caroline says with the finality of a vault door slamming. “We’ll send John when we can spare him.” Gianna beams in victory.

“What, like you weren’t going to see him ever?” Flora quips, returning Gianna’s side-eye with a cheery smile. “This isn’t Rome and we’ll be here four to six weeks. Trust me, you’ll be dead tired of us by then.”

“Which reminds me.” Gianna turns back to John, pointing up the stairs. “There’s a guest room in the front for you.”

“He can stay on the top floor with the rest of the security team,” Caroline says, returning to her laptop as if the conversation already bores her, which it probably does.

“Where?” Gianna points to the collected security team, which, between Cassian, Gianna’s other three bodyguards, Frick and Frack, Mikkel and Astrid, Chiyoh, the four local security, and the four boys on loan from Rome comes out to seventeen people, eight of whom are spread out in the kitchen and engaged in a vicious round of bloody knuckles while the rest of them cheer from the edges of the room and the open garden doors, supplemented by Echo and Ariadne. “The primary bodyguards already claimed the empty twin beds and the rest of the zoo is duking it out for who gets to pretend they like each other and share the four double beds, which means those four rooms are completely full, and there’s sure as shit no spare beds under the garage with Beatrice and Ariadne and Echo. Besides, he’s not security.”

“Sameen and Ares’s room above the master suite is empty.” It’s impressive how Caroline can work in a room with breakfast being made and nineteen people playing or cheering on bloody knuckles as if she’s in a bunker alone. “He’d have a room and a bathroom to himself.”

Gianna pulls a face and points to the collected security teams. “I repeat: the rest of the zoo. And where do you think Chiyoh’s going to sleep, the roof?”

“Which reminds me,” Flora mutters, turning to glare daggers at the security teams. “Hey, assholes! Take bloody knuckles outside.”

“You told us to work out sleeping arrangements,” Matteo says, yanking his hand clear before Constantine can hit it.

“And if you scratch the shit out of my counters, I’ll make all of you sleep in the cars like the heathens you are. Rock paper scissors, go outside, or get _beat over the head with that fucking ruler_ ,” Flora snaps at Constantine, who drops said ruler with a clatter. Echo glowers slow death by hedge shear at them when they step into the garden, though, so they opt for rock paper scissors.

“Well, then.” John turns back to Gianna to find her grinning. “Looks like you get to avoid the zoo as long as you’re not bothered by sharing a bathroom with me.”

"You know, John, you could just stay in the master bedroom. Preemptive staking of claims,” Flora quips, earning a confused look from Gianna.

Caroline murmurs something about him liking the master bathroom better, which might be the closest thing he’s ever heard to Caroline making a joke. She’s typing when she says it, though, so he probably misheard her. He accepts the guest room next to Gianna with good graces and pretends not to notice security’s collective disappointment with equal good graces. Chiyoh at least looks pleased not to have to share a room or a bathroom with anyone, even if the zoo is on the other side, but then again, Flora had her bring a rather large case of sniper rifles, and cleaning them will probably be easier with extra floor space.

After breakfast, Flora sends him to go get settled. “We’ll be making calls all morning and bullying people into meetings, so we won’t need you until after lunch. Realistically, probably not until after my meeting with the financier. You can run to your house if you want, get the lay of the land. I can hook you up with whoever you need when you’re ready.”

He completely forgot about his house until Flora mentioned it, and it congeals in a cold lump in his stomach as soon as she says it. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands and settles back into the kitchen table next to Tara, continuing her ongoing referral of clients to designers and other clients to suppliers while dishing out Chiyoh’s marching orders.

John nods to the security boys trekking up the stairs and Ariadne settling in to wash the dining room windows, but the ground floor is quiet, his footsteps surprisingly loud against the tile. He’s strongly tempted to go back upstairs, away from the garage, but tells himself that’s ridiculous and, either way, he needs his duffel and garment bag from the car.

The living room somehow seems even more disorienting the second time, and it takes crossing back and forth with his bags to realize why. Logic suggests that the living room should be aligned with the library above it, given that their outer walls match down to the bay of three windows behind the living room piano that once let out into the back garden. Except that logic is wrong. It seems that when Flora created the garage, she moved the back wall of the living room in by several feet to create more space for the cars on the other side.

And now that John has seen upstairs and figured out its illusory spatial orientation relative to the garage on the other side, the living room makes even less sense. It stretches the width of the house and the mirrors create a greater illusion of space, but even so, moving the wall in should have made it uncomfortably narrow. After all, the stairs are aligned on top of each other on every floor running alongside the central shaft of the house, and the staircase, almost the width of the entry hall, lets out just beside the living room wall. It takes another few seconds of adding to realize that Flora must have narrowed the entry hall to make up for the space she shaved off the other side of the living room, which means she must have narrowed the stairs on every floor to maintain the appearance of alignment. It’s a sign of Flora’s skill that the house looks like its internal architecture has always been this way, no small feat considering that the house must be a century old and Flora couldn’t have started renovation any more than twelve years ago after Santino took over from Giovanni.

This house _looks_ like the house in Rome, proudly bearing the weight of its history in every floorboard. But then again, in the true spirit of the house in Rome with its jokes and its passageways lined with guns hidden in the walls of every room, that too is one more trick of the eye. This house is just more…aggressive in its illusions. And unlike the house in Rome, this house is far more interested in raising a middle finger to history than preserving it.

He does pause at the foot of the stairs, though, and look inside the open office door nearby feeling a bit like a squatter with his bag still in his hand. Santino’s office, confirmed by the stamp of Santino’s personality as clearly as a flashing neon sign. Flora painted the wood panels of the whole room such a dark red they’re almost black, the only color offered by the books lining the walls and leather furniture the color of caramel. Even so, the darkness of the red should have made the room a cave. Except the front window casts generous light from the street, amplified by the wall of antiqued gold mirror opposite it, so that when people sit and face Santino’s desk to talk to him, they see themselves reflected behind his back like a vision of a brighter future, hazy but radiant. John can easily envision Santino in this room, offering a glass of scotch from one of the bottles in the cabinet under the window and working over visitors who don’t know they signed away their souls as soon as they walked through the front door.

But the room is silent without Santino. John turns away and retreats up the stairs to leave the office empty.

He finds the third floor just as empty, though there are sounds of security settling and heckling each other upstairs. Gianna’s bedroom door is closed, but a glance down the hall shows Flora and Caroline’s rooms in the back, doors open and their bags at the foot of their respective beds. Maybe it’s the emptiness that moves his feet to turn left down the hall instead of going to the guest room in the front corner, though closer inspection of Flora and Caroline’s rooms reveals little more than expected details indicating their respective owners. The corner room is clearly Flora’s, with its muted red walls and merlot velvet and the ceramic Meiji okimono skull and Jusepe de Ribera’s _The Penitent Magdalen_ above the bed, draped in red with a skull in her hand and meeting her own eye in an array of small sculptural mirrors on the opposite wall without a single drop of penitence as if daring the world to reprimand her for it. Caroline’s room is obviously the one next to it, a soft gold backdrop to ink paintings of landscapes like visions of the afterlife, devoid of color and populated by a parallel universe emotionality: Fu Baoshi’s _Xiling Gorge_ and Qi Baishi’s _Cold Night_ framing the bed opposite the promised _Haboku sansui_ set on the dresser under the window. The only sign of brightness in the room comes from the mockery of life in the glittering gold leaves and vines that claw up the black Chinese screen Flora refashioned as Caroline’s headboard, and the only sign of human life in the room comes from a contemporary ink painting from the _Botan Dōrō_ , the samurai Ogiwara Shinnojo asleep and entwined with a beautiful woman on a temple grave while a girl with a peony lantern looks on, the beautiful woman revealed as a skeleton where the rays of the lantern touch her, the girl herself holding the lantern with skeleton hands. Past the stairs to the fourth floor and the door to Caroline’s room, though, is an open door at the end of the hall—the master suite, quiet and waiting.

Out of curiosity, or maybe a lack of anyone there to comment, or maybe whatever motivated him to look inside the empty office despite having a good guess what he’d find, John looks inside the master suite, finding a room paneled in light wood brightened by generous light from two windows facing the back, the furniture in warm neutrals punctuated by black, visually ascetic and texturally inviting. He’s almost sorry he did look—this room feels even more like Santino than the office, and unlike the office, it feels like Santino in a way that’s personal. On one hand, he can entirely imagine Santino occupying this room, sleeping under the black and gold canvas Flora and Caroline made for him like the equations and figures of Fisher’s model of intertemporal consumption are the stuff to inspire good dreams, running a hand across the book spines before plucking one to stretch out on the sofa, reappearing from the bathroom to rifle through the closet as if taking a shower in a bathroom done entirely in swirling blue and white cipollino marble is a perfectly normal thing to do. It’s a pleasant thing to imagine. On the other hand, the room makes it all the more evident that Santino isn’t here.

John doesn’t linger there long.

Instead, he goes back down the hall where he belongs, back to the guest room in the front corner. It’s a pleasant, tasteful little room Flora painted with a breath of delicate celadon green and decorated with white and burnt gold and deep red, brightened by the two windows facing the street with the curtains flung wide. It’s not his room in Rome, but then, as evidenced by the noise above him, not all roads lead to Rome. Or, at least, not East 80th Street.

Unfortunately, being in the room means John doesn’t have much else to do. He takes his house keys out of his pocket, but they seem to freeze his hand in place. So he putters for a while, setting the keys on the nightstand as if handling a bomb and looking anywhere else while he makes slow work of putting his clothes away in the closet, checking the room for a camera and finding one in the clock on the dresser, locking the bedroom door and ever so casually setting his duffel on the dresser to block the camera’s view of the room so he can hide his guns from sight without anyone’s prying eyes. But looking at the clock upon moving his duffel bag to the bottom of the closet reveals he only managed to waste twenty minutes, and the keys have not grown legs in the interim.

John handled those keys for years. They were never anything more than keys, a way into his retreat. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t pick them up and get a set of car keys from the garage and go back, just to get a sense of what he needs to do to prepare his house.

Except now, staring at them leaves an itch in his palms and a fluid shift in his ears, the kind usually inspired by leaving Rome to work on his own without Santino. Santino isn’t here—he can feel the emptiness of the master bedroom and the office two floors below like an echo reverberating in his chest—and yet the thought of leaving the house on East 80th Street to drive out of the city feels like he would pull something out of himself with every successive block.

John should go to his house. He needs to go to his house, needs to deal with it.

He pulls open the nightstand drawer, drops the keys inside, and closes the drawer with a wash of relief that they’re out of sight. The room feels breathable now.

Caroline has vanished to her office off the dining room, but Flora is still in the kitchen with Tara and Chiyoh when he comes downstairs, glancing up with a smile. “You off?”

John should say yes, should say he forgot the keys and go back upstairs for them and be on his way. Instead he shakes his head. “Jet lag’s catching up. Probably won’t do much good right now anyway.” Which isn’t untrue, because jet lag settles around his shoulders like it was waiting for him to notice, but it’s not so bad that he couldn’t work around it.

If Flora’s bullshit meter is going off, she doesn’t mention it, just smiles again. “Yeah, I hear you.” Even though Flora hasn’t slowed down for a second since they set foot in JFK. “We’ll have a slow morning while Caroline and I arrange meetings, so you can go later if you want. I’ll need you after lunch at one. In the meantime, get comfortable and help yourself to anything.”

“Thanks.” John takes his excuse and ducks to the library next to the kitchen in search of reading material. There’s plenty, but he also sees Santino in the silent record player in the corner, so he takes a book off the shelf and opens the door to step onto the back garden, sitting in a chair to face toward the townhouse, alone but for Echo tending the plants. Facing the townhouse, the garden becomes a frame of ivy and boxwood, moss and ferns, its tricks settling into a pleasant shape even as he sees the work Flora did to make this hideaway invisible and impregnable. An ivy-covered trellis starts at the corner of the house and stretches all the way to the street to create a verdant hideaway conveniently concealing the second-floor windows from view from the taller building next door, with a panel of mirrored glass above a small burbling fountain at the far end creating the illusion that the garden goes on forever if one simply stepped through the looking glass. Trees pick up coverage where the trellis leaves off, three long rows of a wall garden populated by dozens of species of herbs apiece extending from the trellis all the way to the edge of the narrow pond running the width of the garden under the mirrored wall centered on another small fountain. It’s unclear what demons Echo is on a first-name basis with to keep them stunning, given that townhouse gardens are a nightmare of limited light and too much moisture and this one is no exception. Then again, their aggressive thriving against all logic and reason is the least confusing thing about this place, and it certainly lends a soothing scent to the air, a companion to the sound of moving water. Even Flora’s inescapably practical additions—the narrow balcony connecting Flora, Caroline, and Santino’s rooms along the back of the house, a spiral staircase on either end letting out in the back garden and continuing down to the garage as cleverly-placed escape routes—look like a charming bit of framing, each bedroom’s glass door punctuated by a hanging planter box on the balcony railing, the staircases dressed in a whirl of ivy vines, the mirrored glass in the windows of the top two stories reflecting back a secret green escape from the bustle of the city.

It’s hardly Rome, but facing the townhouse, the back garden is much less disorienting. Downright pleasant, even, especially with Echo’s low singing, which lets him know where he recognized her from—she’s the singer who performs at the Continental bar, much beloved of the patrons and the staff alike. He shakes his head and settles into the snippets of conversation he can hear drifting from the open doors to the kitchen under Echo’s singing, where Flora is still laying plans with Tara and Chiyoh.

“You sure you don’t want me to deal with the locals?” Tara says. “They know me. I can take Ariadne and raise some hell.”

“Sweetie, you know I love seeing you two throw down,” Flora replies. “But like you said, they know you. They’re comfortable with you. And I don’t want them comfortable. I want them running for the hills because they know Mama’s in town. And I want to see you do my other favorite thing, which is batting those beautiful baby blues and bringing me home a pig on a spit.”

John doesn’t need to look up to hear Tara smiling. “You sure I’m his type?”

Flora snorts. “First of all, you’re everybody’s type. And second of all,” a rustling of papers and a handful of pages pushed across wood, “trust me, you’re his type.”

John lets the conversation slip away from him in the ebb and flow of other conversations he can hear through the open windows. It’s peaceful back here, in this little green reprieve, almost as if they’re not here to stop a war. He can learn to like the house like this. But he can’t quite get himself to forget where the house is empty, so when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket an hour later, he picks it up with more relief than he’ll admit. “How much trouble can you get up to with Carmine in twenty-four hours?”

“...who’s Carmine?”

Fuck.

“Is that Santino?” Flora calls, standing from the kitchen table and stepping out into the garden.

Fuck everything. “Sorry, Helen. I was expecting someone else.”

“I got that impression,” Helen says, a hint of laughter in her voice. Flora wheezes in silent laughter. John flips her off because this is, in fact, her handiwork. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, I just…”

“You were expecting someone else?”

“...yeah.”

He’s silent a bit too long to be socially acceptable, mostly because he can’t figure out what the hell to say between jet lag and Flora a few feet away. “It just sounded like the phone call last night was serious and you weren’t answering your phone,” Helen catches herself, “…and in retrospect this is definitely a blow off so I’m going to hang up before I keep embarrassing myself.”

“No.” Flora snaps her fingers in front of his face, then signs _New York, family emergency, uncle in an accident, four weeks_. He glares death by defenestration at her. “It’s not a blow off, I swear. There’s a bit of a family crisis right now. We just got the news last night. Boss’s uncle was in an accident.”

It’s apparently genuine enough, or at least his genuineness in saying it wasn’t a blow off, that it registers as honest. “Shit. Everyone alright?”

“Everyone’s—” John catches himself and sighs, closing his eyes so he can’t see whatever the hell Flora’s signing in front of him. “Everyone’s not fine. We’re not sure yet, honestly. But I did mean it. About the rain check.” He did, actually, because Helen is lovely and normal and he’s not in the habit of being a dick for no reason. He’s glad his eyes are closed so he can’t see it if Flora looks victorious, because then he might have to beat her or himself to death with the phone.

“In that case, maybe we reschedule? I can say from personal experience that alcohol is great for family crises.”

“That might not be for a while. I’m in New York for a few weeks.”

“Come again?”

“New York. The family flew out last night.”

He can hear Helen processing that from across the ocean. “Your boss works fast.”

“Close-knit family. We’ll be out here six weeks at most, but we’re hoping it’ll be more like three.”

It’s probably only because he was coming back from Riga, Sarajevo, and Berlin when she met him that Helen doesn’t tell him he’s full of shit. Then again, she might be rethinking his honesty on that one too.

“Look,” Flora pokes him hard in the shoulder and he opens his eyes to slits to glare at her, “I know it sounds ridiculous, and you can lose my number in the next three minutes or at any point in the next three weeks, but I really did mean it about the rain check, and I really did have fun in the gallery and messaging you.” He should let this die. It would be simpler that way, and has the fringe benefit of spiting Flora. But he can feel Santino’s empty rooms like an ache in his spine, somewhere between the knot in his shoulder that is the knowledge Santino will call from San Luca, the knot in the other shoulder that is the ever-increasing complication of his life with Santino, and the migraine forming behind his eyes that is his impulse to strangle Flora for making this mess in the first place. Helen is the least complicated thing he’s dealt with in at least the last week, probably the least complicated thing he’ll deal with in the next month, and being just John sounds like a respite in this house of mirrors out to discombobulate him at every turn.

Silence. Helen lets out a breath. John’s sure he’s about to be hung up on. Then his phone buzzes. “What do you think of this? We just got it in yesterday.”

It’s an olive branch he’s not owed, and John opens his texts in relief. Then blinks. “You do not have that in your gallery.”

“Of course we do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s _Landscape_ by Sesshū and it’s hanging in my boss’s dining room in New York.”

“It is not.”

John stands from his chair and steps around a giggling Flora to pass through the library to the dining room, framing the painting to show just enough of the wall behind it and the chain and knob the frame hangs from to make it clear it’s not lifted from the internet, and sends her the photo.

“Who the hell is your boss, anyway?”

“Someone with no concept of money.”

“No shit,” Helen laughs. “What else does he have in there, the _Mona Lisa_?”

John steps to the other side of the mantel and takes a photo of the ink painting on the other side, Ike no Taiga’s _Fishing in Springtime_.

Helen whistles. “ _Christ_ but your boss has great taste in art.”

“His business partner is big into East Asian ink paintings.”

“So I see.” John pointedly ignores Flora as he steps back into the garden and resumes his seat. “Sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“I wouldn’t have believed me either.” He can see Flora smiling at him and knows he should probably hang up before he murders her. “Listen, I’ve got to run, but I’ll message later?”

“I’ll send you a photo that’s actually from my gallery,” Helen laughs. “I hope your boss’s relative gets better soon.”

“Thanks.” He hangs up and glares at Flora. “What are you smiling for?”

Flora gives him a funny look. “John. I meant it when I said I won’t judge you for having a bit of fun. Especially right now.”

John should probably interrogate her on what that means instead of letting her wander back to the kitchen. Fortunately, his phone rings again before he has a chance to neglect the wise and healthy decision of his own accord, and this time, it actually is Santino.

“You’re not having too much fun without me, are you?” John will not admit to himself the relief he feels in hearing Santino through the phone, even if Santino’s speaking English.

“We’re here to stop a war,” John replies in Neapolitan. “How much fun can we have?”

Santino laughs. “Sounds like the perfect place to have fun to me.” He switches into Neapolitan, though, and it soothes the ache in John’s teeth that started back when Caroline spoke English in JFK.

“You’re bored enough for murder, aren’t you?”

“If he’s murdering Carmine without me, I will have Ares and Sameen beat him to death with a shovel and leave him to rot in that miserable clod of mud,” Flora shouts from the kitchen.

“You heard that, right?”

“Boring.” It’s easy as breathing to slip into conversation, almost as if Santino is next to him and will stand from one of the chairs to stroll downstairs to the piano. “How are the Corleones and Sollozzo? I can only assume by the lack of news that Sonny hasn’t turned him into Swiss cheese yet.”

“Not for lack of wanting.”

“It’s good to know filial piety isn’t dead,” Santino hums. “Caroline talked him off a ledge?”

“Him and Michael both.”

“Little Michael Corleone?” Santino sounds delighted by the prospect. “The Afghanistan war hero who couldn’t run from his family and the family business fast enough? That Michael Corleone?”

“Apparently Vito getting shot put some things in perspective.”

Santino hums as if he’s turning that over on his tongue. “You said him and Michael. Not Fredo?”

“Fredo wasn’t there.”

“What, was he lurking in the closet?”

“Vegas. Apparently Vito sent him out two months ago. Michael wanted to call him back to be with Vito. Sonny said he didn’t want to have to worry about Vegas.”

That earns him a delighted laugh, though he’s not quite sure which part Santino’s amused by. Or what about that is amusing. “Any word on Sollozzo?”

“Harold called while we were with the Corleones. Caroline’s meeting Sollozzo in the morning.”

Santino gives a chuckle that sounds suspiciously like _that’s my girl_. “Flora has been itching to acquire fresh narcotics lines.”

“We’ll see how happy Sollozzo is about that. And the Tattaglias.”

“What do the Tattaglias have to do with it?”

“They’re supporting him. They arranged the meeting with Vito.”

“I do hope Caroline plans to give them hell.”

“Ninth circle.” John considers for a moment, then decides to cast a reel to see what will happen. “Caroline said she wanted Sollozzo’s backer.”

“You’ll be preoccupied with that fishing expedition for much of the trip, I expect.”

“You don’t think it’s the Tattaglias.” It’s not a question, but then, John suspects he already knows the answer.

“If they really intended to make a power play, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to publicly arrange the meeting with Vito and Sollozzo. They know Vito well enough to know he would refuse Sollozzo’s request to do business, and they wouldn’t risk what’s coming to them being so obvious about it. The meeting was a ruse and the Tattaglias were conveniently careless enough not to pay attention to Sollozzo.”

“This is going to be a mess, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you?”

“Depends on what kind of mess,” Santino demurs. “And whether they get any blood splatter on my walls. How are you liking the house, by the way?”

John could give Santino shit. He probably should, in the interest of not sounding pathetic. Sadly, his tongue isn’t listening to his brain’s logic. “Your office and the master bedroom are entirely too empty.”

He can hear Santino’s smirk from the other side of the ocean. “You miss me.”

“About as much as you miss me in the boondocks with your shitbird ex,” John retorts, because _now_ his tongue and his brain are getting along.

“Like a missing lung.” A hand covers the phone at the other end and John hears a muttered sentence in Calabrian before he has time to process the sentence that came before it. “Sadly, my shitbird ex’s boss is hailing me for dinner.”

“Don’t have too much fun without me. Or else I might be tempted to help Ares and Sameen beat you to death with a shovel.”

“You say the nicest things.” Then Santino is gone and John is alone in the back garden once more.

He hides in his book for a while after that so he doesn’t have to see or hear the empty spaces in the townhouse echoing in the silence the phone line left behind.

He resurfaces at lunch to the sound of Flora, Gianna, and Caroline already bickering at the kitchen table as Chiyoh waves him indoors, Beatrice working over the stove and some of the bodyguards spread out at the island and into the back garden as he passes. So he takes the seat Flora offers him and settles into the noise. It’s not Rome, but at least it’s not quiet.

After lunch, things finally pick up speed. Caroline collects her laptop and bag and Frick and Frack, joined by Matteo and Constantine and two local security, accompany her to the garage to drive to her office in the city, followed swiftly by Gianna and her team of four departing ten minutes later and Chiyoh leaving a few minutes after her with her case of rifles. Flora settles into work too, flagging John to follow her downstairs as Astrid and Mikkel trot along after them.

Flora also has an office in the city, but unlike Caroline, who uses her office strategically, Flora never uses hers. After all, her office in the city is made of a staff of architects and designers, half of them even legal. So instead, Flora leaves the actual office to them and uses the basement level of the townhouse to play host to her clientele. Her office is an eclectic hodgepodge dressed striking bursts of color—the walls and bookshelves layered in rust red textured to look like living wood grain, brightened by plum velvet and the copper sunburst mirror above the fireplace and a row of four 19th century marble specimen skulls in lapis lazuli, red porphyry, green porphyry and rosso antico on her desk, softened by Flora’s design books taking up the far wall, all tucked behind a wall of mirrored glass, the doors thrown open as if they’re always ready to welcome someone in.

But Flora doesn’t settle in the office. Instead, she closes her office doors to hide the red behind a wall of mirrors and settles with her back to her own reflection in the open meeting space outside where the door from the street lets in and which, aside from a mirrored coffee table and two small gray sofas designed to be immediately forgotten, is completely blank. The floor is empty, the walls a dove gray that’s more inviting than white but nonetheless has the visual expressiveness of empty air.

This is intentional, as Flora explains at the financier’s questioning look while handing him a cup of coffee and handing his daughter a mug of hot chocolate, Tara settling beside her to take notes. The point of their meeting is for her to see them, to understand them so that she can populate their canvas with living color, and to do that, they have to start out with a clean slate. This room, she says, should be considered theirs, a test sketch for them to try out the design before painting the real thing. Both of them, she says, smiling warmly at the daughter who, at her father’s prompting, produces a packet from her father’s briefcase, ideas for her room as Flora requested. And when Flora smiles wider and comes to rest on her knees on the floor to get a closer look, asking questions as seriously as she peppers the father with questions about what he wants for the rest of the townhouse, the daughter brightens, happily answering Flora’s questions about her pet parrots. Within ten minutes it’s abundantly obvious that the daughter is completely enchanted by Flora, or at least the vision Flora spins for her—a tiny, beautiful woman with a tumble of dark Medusa curls and a dramatic black-and-red floral blouse who smiles brightly through red lipstick and asks her questions in an Italian accent as if they’re dear old friends who have been out of touch too long, kneeling on the floor without a care for her red suit pants and her heels so that she can get a better look at the daughter’s ideas.

The financier seems equally enchanted by Flora and impressed by the speed with which she seems to settle into photos of his home as if she’s been around them her whole life. He’s even more impressed by the whirlwind pace and surprised but delighted when Flora says she took the liberty of arranging a commission from a local artist to test-run pieces she thinks he’ll like. That, as much as anything, wins him over to Flora’s terms as she explains them: she’ll meet with them in person here, but Tara and her work crew will be her eyes and hands at his house, functioning as if they’re Flora herself. Then again, the financier is also quite taken with Tara.

It takes a while to realize Flora’s spinning a vision for the financier too, though not the way the financier thinks she is. Flora’s not a changeable canvas the way Santino is or an empty mirror the way Caroline is—all her energy is impossible to hide, her emotional color impossible to white out. So Flora doesn’t even try. Instead, she uses it to set the mood of the room, drawing them into all her warm energy so she can reflect back at them a world that’s brighter and more vibrant than the one outside her orbit, using her colors to show them a reflection that’s not _quite_ everything they want, but rather the tantalizing promise that they _could_ get everything they want, that this reflection of whatever it is they want could be theirs to keep if they only asked Flora to give it to them.

After two hours, Flora makes the daughter promise to send photos of all of them before they meet again tomorrow and in turn promises to keep the packet safe for her so she can turn it into something pretty, walking father and daughter back up the stairs out of her office to see them off at the curb with a hug and a wave.

“You make the same promise to your other clients?” John murmurs as she trots back down the stairs to the basement entrance, pulling the door closed behind her.

“Just the cute ones,” Flora says with a smirk.

Her next set of visitors aren’t cute, insofar as no one ever described the Cuneos as cute, but they are more fun, insofar as the Cuneos are the first of the Five Families to heed Caroline and Flora’s roll call. The fact of the Cuneos coming first is hardly surprising—Santino was responsible for Don Cuneo’s rise to power and they’ve long been allies of the Corleones as the local go-betweens for their organizational crutch, which means they’re all too eager to kiss ass with the big boss so that they can re-negotiate terms with Sonny and carry on business as usual while the other Families are still in a snit. It takes a while, given that the Cuneos are deeply unhappy to receive visual confirmation that Flora and Caroline dragged the boogeyman out of the closet for this little excursion. Flora leverages it shamelessly.

Still, it takes longer than expected, and he glances down at his watch with a sigh. “Gianna’s got business starting soon. I should probably check on her.”

Flora shakes her head, grabbing her purse from her office as she tucks things away. “I’ll do it.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Half the reason Santino sent me with you was to spook off anyone in Gianna’s periphery.”

Flora rolls her eyes. “She’s twenty-one, not seven. She’s a big girl. Besides, I blend in better with the Upper East Side crowd and you’ll be bored off your tits. I’ve got _way_ more fun things you could be doing.”

John’s not about to argue with that. So Flora takes over checking in on Gianna’s ring, and John takes over errands that are, as promised, way more fun.

Flora sends him back to the house when he finishes on orders to have dinner, and he finds Frick and Frack chatting with an unfamiliar bodyguard with a stance that says ex-Green Beret and a look in his eye that says ex-CIA. Mr. Reese, John guesses, given that Caroline is in the library with Dr. Wren, a short, birdlike man in glasses who looks John up and down with an appraising eye when he glances in the doorway, the guard dog at his feet pricking his ears in John’s direction.

“Beatrice just started dinner,” Caroline says. “Go shower. I’ll be in the kitchen soon.”

He goes upstairs to make his way to his bedroom, but a glint of something red catches his eye—Gianna’s bedroom door is open, something red catching the light. He’s not sure what propels him forward to look where he doesn’t belong. Maybe because he knows Gianna the least out of everyone in this house, and the rooms are nothing if not mirrors of their owners, and the eerie familiarity of Gianna’s eyes still itches in the back of his head.

Like Gianna’s room in Rome, Gianna’s room in the townhouse is an inverse image of John’s room on the other side, the closet on the left side of the door instead of the right, the bed tucked into the left corner of the room in deference to the window opposite the door where John’s is tucked in the right corner. But unlike Gianna’s room in Rome, it’s not a perfect inverse, and not just because of Gianna’s pointe shoes at the foot of the bed or her athletic tape or her discarded training clothes thrown over the chair waiting for a wash. John’s room in the front of the townhouse has a window facing the street and another window facing the side, but Gianna’s room only has one, leaving the room half as bright.

Gianna’s room is the only room in the entire house with an Italian antique, namely the carved walnut desk at the foot of the bed. Even so, the desk fades into the background in comparison to the room’s three statement pieces, clearly gifts from Santino, Caroline, and Flora: Flora the red horn and bone mirror above the dresser, Caroline the brass bonsai tree with polished red glass leaves on the nightstand, Santino the painting above the bed facing the mirror on the opposite wall. It’s a rather nice piece of work, though John doesn’t recognize it—a nude woman seated on the ground with her back demurely turned and her face hidden from view, the looseness of her posture almost making the viewer skip over the painful tightness of the blue-black bun on her head, done in a dozen shades of blue but for the signature, _Manon Laschelles_ , which is looping cursive in bright silver. The red leaves of the bonsai tree were what caught his eye, glittering like drops of blood frozen in the air in the low light from the window.

It’s the leaves that remind him what he came up here for, so he shakes his head and steps back out of the room where he belongs to surface clean clothes from his own room and start the hot water.

John showers off the evening and makes his way back downstairs to the kitchen, and sure enough, Beatrice is there at work, the security team awkwardly hiding around the kitchen table, probably from Caroline and Dr. Wren. Matteo waves to him when he appears to sit at one of the bar stools near Caroline’s open computer and notebook, the others failing to hide their staring until Matteo elbows them. It’s like the first week of the house all over again.

They make a point of looking anywhere else when Caroline drifts through the doorway but nudge each other when Caroline perches on the bar stool next to John, apparently amazed by the fact that John doesn’t even glance up from the book open in front of him and disquieted by the fact that neither he nor Caroline give any indication of acknowledging each others’ existence in the course of twenty minutes.

“He does that with the boss too,” Matteo tells them, as though he isn’t still unnerved by it.

“Seriously?” the new guy asks. At Matteo’s nod, he squints at them. “Do they hate each other?”

“Nah,” Matteo says, with a note of pride that he gets to be the one in the know. “They get along pretty well, actually.”

The security boys look utterly baffled at the notion of Caroline getting along pretty well with anyone. And terrified at the notion of John getting along pretty well with the boss.

“Good hunting?” Caroline murmurs.

“Flora kept me busy,” John murmurs back. “You?”

Caroline’s mouth tilts up in what might be a smirk. “The Five Families are getting busy.”

He nods to the black leather box beside Caroline’s laptop. “What’s that?”

“A present for Santino.” Caroline pauses typing and opens the box to reveal a small gold Charon’s obol, too thin and fragile to be used as a normal coin and shaped as if the smith laid the metal over the prone form of a bee.

“Might even cheer him up after San Luca.”

Caroline rolls her eyes and closes the box again. “Flora checked on Gianna?”

“Said she’d blend better with the Upper East Side crowd.”

Caroline snorts, returning to her typing as John returns to his book.

They hear the garage door open in advance warning, but they hear Flora and Gianna coming the second they step into the living room, making enough noise to wake the dead. Flora cackles at something Gianna says as they walk up the stairs, though she lets Gianna go to swoop over and hug Caroline as soon as they set foot in the kitchen.

“Good hunting?” Caroline says mildly.

“I _love_ the Symbolists,” Flora crows, smiling at John with her whole face before leaning back against the counter to point at Cassian, who strides in between healthy heckling from Astrid and Mikkel on either side. “And I might have to poach Cassian more often.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Gianna says brightly as she digs up wine glasses.

Flora barks a laugh. “I’m teasing, sweetie. I’m quite happy with my girls’ handiwork.” Her grin settles on John. “You get some culture while I was gone?”

“Brushed up my Bosnian.”

Gianna rolls her eyes. “We’ll drag you to a gallery yet, you wait and see.”

“Plenty of time for that,” Flora returns, then turns to Beatrice with glee. “I see cappelleti verdi and black mushrooms, you about to make my night?”

“And make Emilia-Romagna proud,” Beatrice replies.

“You’re a goddess among women.” Flora holds out a hand to Gianna, wiggling her fingers until Gianna takes it. “Let’s get cleaned up. I wouldn’t dream of offending the chef by being late to dinner.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Beatrice calls after them, sending Ariadne to get wine from the basement.

Except they’re not gone fifteen minutes. They’re gone all of fifteen seconds, which is the time it takes them to make it to the top of the stairs, for the kitchen to hear a muttered _what the fuck_ , and for Gianna to march back down the stairs, Flora’s footsteps close behind.

“What the hell, Caroline?” At Caroline’s raised eyebrow, Gianna gestures up the stairs. “What did you do with my stuff in the bathroom?”

Now that John thinks about it, there was a surprising absence of Gianna’s possessions in the bathroom, given that she’s been here for a month.

“It’s in the bathroom Flora and I are sharing,” Caroline replies, as though it’s abundantly obvious that Gianna’s things don’t belong anywhere else. Then again, she just pulled up Skype, so she’s not entirely paying attention.

Gianna looks at her like she’s lost her goddamn mind. “Why?”

“Do you really want to share a bathroom with him?”

“I’m not a dog,” John snaps.

The look Caroline gives him says she’s not impressed either. The same look she then levels at Gianna, which says this is not a battle Gianna is destined to win. Gianna sighs and mutters something uncomplimentary in Neapolitan, because picking your battles is a virtue where Caroline is concerned. Also, Sebastian just picked up on Skype, which means Caroline is officially not paying attention in favor of holding a Skype conversation with her cat, which she apparently does whenever she’s not at home to do it in person. The fact that Yurei seems to understand what Skype is and answers Caroline right back to hold a complete conversation is further evidence that she’s definitely some kind of spirit of death in cat form and also, it’s weirdly adorable. The security boys gape.

Flora swoops down the stairs to wrap an arm around Gianna’s shoulders. “Losing battle, sweetie. And if you want the bathroom first, you’d better haul ass.”

“Fucking nutball,” Gianna mutters.

“The nuttiest,” Flora replies in a tone of consolation.

Beatrice is an artist with pasta, if not quite in the same vein as Mischa, and John can almost, if not quite, convince himself that he’s in Rome again. The illusion crumbles as he hears Gianna bickering with Caroline and Flora as they retreat to the third floor to sleep, and closing and locking his bedroom door doesn’t quite block the sound.

His phone is where he left it, charging on the nightstand. He should answer Helen, who actually did send him something from her gallery in the early afternoon. But the closed door means he can’t hide the townhouse’s silences behind a wall of chatter. Even though he can still hear movement above him, even though he can hear Flora and Caroline and Gianna, there’s no sound from the back corner of the third floor, because Santino isn’t here.

John lets his phone go dark and turns it face down on the nightstand, crawling into bed with his back to the door, away from the mirror above the dresser, so he doesn’t have to hear the silence where Santino should be or see the reflection in the mirror where Santino isn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh John. Oh sweetie. You're a mess. *Laura Palmer voice* MEANWHILE! The entrance of our other main character. Bonus points for those who thought it was mighty odd we somehow haven't met Gianna until now. Congratulations, it is odd! Keep that in mind. 
> 
> Flora's house, Palazzo Costaguti, is a real place, as is Piazza Mattei (see it here: https://www.costagutiexperience.com/). However, the architecture actually resembles that of Palazzo Mattei (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187791-d7810490-Reviews-Palazzo_Mattei_di_Giove-Rome_Lazio.html) but I kept it transplanted in the location of Palazzo Costaguti because Flora would have an easier time securing it. If you look it up in Google Maps, it's a collection of buildings around a courtyard, we just live in a parallel universe where all those buildings are one large palazzo. Staff quarters on the street level are traditional in houses like that, and the piano nobile level (the next floor up) is where the family receives visitors, while the upper floors are private quarters. 
> 
> If you're wondering why the frick John speaks fluent Italian but can't understand Sicilian, that's because Sicilian isn't Italian at all. Despite the fact that Sicilian is popularly thought to be a dialect of Italian, it's not a dialect, accent, variant of Italian, or even derived from the language that became Italian. It has completely different linguistic roots from Italian, along with layers of other languages from various peoples who invaded the island over the centuries. The predominance of Italian in public education and media means most Sicilians no longer speak Sicilian as a first language, though about 5 million people speak Sicilian in Sicily and another 2 million worldwide. In translation: it's a fantastic narrative suspense tool. More on Sicilian here: https://www.thoughtco.com/sicilian-for-beginners-2011648
> 
> Caroline's cat, Yurei, is in fact from the rarest cat species in the world, at least according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khao_Manee). According to Wikipedia, kittens on the low end of the price range (due to "defects" like a broken tail, non-whiteness, deafness, etc.) negotiate for around $1,800 USD. A young Khao Manee coming from a prestigious breeding program in the West or Thailand with odd eyes (a form of cat heterochromia) negotiates around $3,500. A cat like Yurei with beautiful features, singular colored eyes, or very rare features goes for up to $10,000. Unclear if "very rare features" includes "vengeful creature of death" but hey. And yes, Santino and Flora did in fact outfit their houses for a cat, because they love Caroline Turing more than life itself. You'll find out the extent of that in the epilogue (they love Caroline more than life), but you'll meet Yurei in a few chapters. 
> 
> For those of you who know The Godfather, you'll remember that Vito Corleone was playing with a gray tabby in the very first scene (more on that here: https://cinemacats.com/the-godfather-1972/). Marlon Brando apparently adored cats and found that cat as a stray on set and got so attached the cat became a feature of the scene. I've seen an examination of masculinity in The Godfather that says this scene is showing Vito's softer side, but also how everything he does is deliberate. More here: http://theseventies.berkeley.edu/godfather/2018/06/06/men-of-the-house-modes-of-masculinity-in-the-godfather/ In this case, Caroline and Flora use the cat to the same effect. 
> 
> The townhouse on East 80th Street is based on a real and gorgeous townhouse, most of the rooms lifted verbatim (https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/design-firm-sawyer-berson-manhattan-townhouse). The garden is partially based on this one (https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/julianne-moore-home-garden-new-york-article). The kitchen I used is the staff kitchen, because a) these fucking rich people have a fucking staff kitchen like that's a normal thing to do and b) I personally think the modern kitchen is ugly compared to the staff one. I made significant alterations to the house for practicality, because there was no possible way that Santino, Flora, and Caroline could all be there with security going in three different directions and always have to wrangle parking and places for staff to sleep, they couldn't afford the delay of having all their security stay at the Continental, and also, what are zoning laws when your brother is literally an underworld king?
> 
> Last but not least: Charon's obols are a type of coin which is too thin to be used as a normal coin and isn't any recognized currency. That's because Charon's obols were the coins placed on the eyes or in the mouths of the dead before burial as payment to the ferryman, Charon, to convey souls across the river separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. More on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol


	8. oh sinnerman, where you gonna run?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil Sollozzo bites off more than he can chew. The Five Families heed Flora's roll call, some more easily than others. Meanwhile, Caroline deals with the Tattaglias accordingly, giving John a crash course in why Frick and Frack have killer poker faces. Musings are made on the past and the way things are. Gianna makes an urgent request of John.

“John Wick, is it?” To Virgil Sollozzo’s credit, he doesn’t falter when he sees John waiting in the entry hall, though he and his security are clearly displeased to discover the boogeyman lying in wait for them. But when he tries to keep walking into the entry hall, security steps in the way.

“Sorry,” John says, not at all sorry. “One bodyguard. Unarmed. Dangerous times and all.”

That displeases Sollozzo’s bodyguards even more, but one of them still steps forward and he and Sollozzo let Frack check everywhere but their large intestines for weapons, laying them on the entryway table as he goes before stepping away satisfied.

John jerks his head over his shoulder and begins walking up the stairs, hearing the click of three pairs of shoes behind him. He also hears their reaction to the dining room when they reach the top of the stairs. It’s Flora’s piece de resistance, a double-height dining room crowned by an octagonal colonnaded atrium with a 15-foot-diameter oculus bypassing the top floor to reach the roof. The oculus is itself an illusion, creating the appearance of a four-story stature thanks to a partial floor invisible from the street, its interior lined in mirrors and casting light down on a dining table long enough for ten. The walls are sheathed in iridescent celadon silk to display Caroline’s ink paintings and brightened by window-like mirrors reflecting the light from the third-story windows directly opposite them. They host guests here who they want to impress and stun.

But Caroline doesn’t want to impress and stun. She wants to play dirty chess. So John clears his throat to get Sollozzo’s attention and opens the door to Caroline’s office off the dining room in the front corner of the house, gesturing for Sollozzo and his bodyguard to step inside after him, Frack closing the door behind them when they do.

“Good morning, Mr. Sollozzo,” Caroline says with an expression that might be a faint smile, looking up from inspecting the gold Charon’s obol. 

Like Caroline’s bedroom, Caroline’s office feels the most like her. But unlike Caroline’s bedroom, which is Caroline when no one is looking, Caroline’s office is meant to receive people, which means she and Flora deliberately chose every detail to unsettle and disorient. It’s positioned to get excellent light between the window facing the street and the arched glass doors opening onto the covered patio, but Caroline and Flora hung gauzy, bone-colored curtains which Caroline keeps drawn when visitors come, deepening the burgundy paint on the walls and leaving a haze that makes the time of day uncertain. The burbling of the small fountain is audible on the other side of the glass doors, but the fountain itself is out of sight and all logic suggests there should not be any moving water up here, making it uncertain whether the ears can be trusted. The ceiling is a high-gloss black capturing shadow replicas of the room and the floor tiles are white marble, making it uncertain which way is up. Caroline’s glass and metal desk anchors the room, two tall black bookshelves taking up two-thirds of the wall on either side behind the desk facing down two black leather chairs and a sofa. Caroline’s Japanese ink paintings aren’t in the office at all, though John will admit that the two yurei-zu paintings in the room add greater effect—Hokusai's _The Laughing Hannya_ and _Oiwa-san_ sit behind the chairs, to one side chittering cannibal teeth and to the other a pale, deformed ghost face. John settles near _The Laughing Hannya_ because he is a stage setting for this occasion and it seems the perfect place for a boogeyman. In any case, it gives him a view of the books on the shelves over Caroline’s shoulders while keeping an angle on Sollozzo’s face and hands. Frack glides into place behind Caroline’s right shoulder, a matched sentinel to Frick behind her left shoulder, and at the center of it all is Caroline herself, whose black dress and earrings like drops of molten gold and carefully accentuated dark eyes and dark hair swept back to frame her face make her look like nothing so much as a presiding god of death. All that’s missing is Yurei, a shining white phantom of a cat laying in front of Caroline with her eerie gold eyes fixed on Sollozzo as if to hypnotize him before eating his entrails as her morning snack.

Sollozzo doesn’t look that pleased when he registers John has no intention of leaving. His bodyguard looks even less pleased. “He’s staying?”

“Vito Corleone was shot in the street, Mr. Sollozzo,” Caroline replies, setting the obol gently against the open box of gold coins waiting for inspection on the corner of her desk, the form of the bug in the obol taking a tantalizing glint. It’s unclear when Caroline acquired the obol yesterday or how she had time to think about collecting another piece for Santino’s collection in the study, but that’s not the point. The point is to draw Sollozzo’s eye to the full box of gold coins the Continental treasurer brought last night for Caroline to inspect, a deliberately blase display of the wealth of their world. “These are dangerous times for a woman to meet men alone. Well,” Caroline smiles, “more dangerous than usual, anyway.” She chuckles at her own joke, a sound that says she fears no danger from Sollozzo. “Please, sit.”

“Thank you.” John sees Sollozzo’s gaze flick compulsively to the painting behind Caroline’s head as he sits, then to the small marble statue on the corner of Caroline’s desk, then forcibly back to Caroline. If he had to bet money, John would bet a significant sum that Caroline finds this amusing—the painting behind her is a canvas done in loose black and gray brush strokes depicting a woman with her back turned, almost nude but for her hair and the underwear she’s starting to shrug off, and the statue on the corner of Caroline’s desk is a small replica of _Venus de Medici_. After all, most of the men who step into Caroline’s office are straight, and straight men are pathetically predictable in their distractions. Still, Sollozzo rallies admirably. “Terrible business with Vito.”

“Not enough for you not to order the shots,” Caroline returns, her measured tone unchanging.

“I see news travels fast.”

“It does when you have investments to worry about. And Santino has a great many investments to worry about in New York.” Caroline tilts her head, studying him. “Which begs the question of what you’re doing in my office, given that you shot a man who has been loyal to Santino for twelve years.”

“To ask what price it would take for Santino to neglect Vito’s loyalty.”

“You want to do business?”

“Is that so surprising?”

Caroline arches an eyebrow. “Twelve years is a long time.”

“That was then,” Sollozzo replies. “This is now. Vito Corleone is an old man, and the times are rapidly leaving his business behind. But you and Santino, you’re not like Vito. You’re forward-thinkers.”

“Like yourself?”

“Yes.”

“We invest in institutions, Mr. Sollozzo. Organizations with proven longevity and reach. Does this mean you’re thinking of expanding?” Her faint smile is back, though her eyes are emotionless.

Sollozzo laughs. A common reaction when trying to cover Caroline’s blankness. “What can I say? Business is booming, and if you’re not dreaming big in New York, you’re not really in New York.”

“Alright.” Caroline folds her hands in front of her. A signal that he has her attention, though her cool disinterest does not budge. “What does forward-thinking mean to you?”

“Five million into the fund, as a gesture of good faith. Santino and Miss Rosalia would have access to my supply lines once he invested in kind.”

“Do I look like a piggy bank, Mr. Sollozzo? We require a ten million buy-in. We take a twenty-five percent cut of the returns.”

“That’s a high price.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s the cost of doing business. Ten percent goes back to the High Table coffers.”

“I already pay my dues to the High Table.”

“No, Mr. Sollozzo, you pay to play. Consider this an investment in High Table goodwill.”

“And how do I know you won’t just steal it?”

Caroline looks like he just called her mother a crack addict. If she had a mother or gave a shit about him calling a spade a spade. “Why would we bother? It’s bad optics. We’re interested in partnerships, not petty theft.”

“Ten million is more than petty theft.”

“Not to Santino, it isn’t.”

Sollozzo smiles a smarmy smile that says he does not know Caroline Turing at all. “Caroline—”

“First of all,” Caroline says, her faint smile still in place and her eyes as detached as a surgeon preparing for a lobotomy, “I do not appreciate cheap tricks, Mr. Sollozzo, so do not invite yourself into familiarity thinking it will get you anywhere. And second of all, if you continue talking to me in the simpering tone you use to bully dumb bitches, I will have Mr. Wick throw you in the street on your face so that I can carry on my day with people who don’t insist on wasting my time.”

Sollozzo clearly wasn’t expecting that, but the smarmy look vanishes. “Buy-ins are for Texas hold ‘em, Miss Turing. This isn’t cards.”

“Dr. Turing. And no, it’s not. But then, it’s not a hedge fund either. Hedge funds can’t guarantee returns.”

“And you can?”

Caroline looks him up and down, taking in his suit, his watch, the way he sits in her chair trying to look comfortable in it like none of it impresses her. Then again, she picked the chairs because they’re impossible to sit in comfortably. “You’re not much of an investor, are you, Mr. Sollozzo?”

Sollozzo shrugs, an arrogant roll of the shoulders that has no place in front of Caroline Turing. “I prefer to be aggressive with known quantities.”

“Your book tallies show it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Forgive me for not having the sums off the top of my head,” Caroline continues evenly, as if Sollozzo hasn’t said anything, “I’m afraid I’m not accustomed to working with numbers that small.”

Her voice is so measured and politely apologetic that it takes until the last word to realize he’s being insulted. It’s a sign that Sollozzo is here for more than a whim that he doesn’t rise to it. “I’ll assume, out of politeness, that you looked in my books out of polite interest.”

Flora smiles with her whole face, a warm, inviting expression that charms and melts her target. Caroline smiles as a veneer, an expression her face has trained her muscles to produce because it tricks prey animals into thinking she won’t use her teeth to turn them inside out. “We make a habit of investigating organizations with whom we may be interested in partnering.”

“And are you interested?”

“We may be.” Caroline settles against her chair. “What kind of returns do you have in mind? A number, if you had to hazard.”

Sollozzo names a number. Caroline bursts out laughing, though not a note of it travels to her eyes. “Why is that funny, Dr. Turing?”

“Because you’ve further proven you’re not thinking big picture. And we make a habit of finding partners who can always see the forest for the trees.”

“Alright, then.” Sollozzo settles into his chair. Tries, anyway. “What would the big picture look like?”

“Let me put it this way. If a company falls ten, fifteen percent in a day and you know about it in advance, you can make a lot of money. If you know a company will fall thirty percent in one day, you can make shattering amounts of money.” She shrugs. “We don’t do those types of portfolios terribly often, you understand. Otherwise, the sheep would notice and the authorities would have to do something about it. Just a few,” she considers, clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth as her eyes settle back on him, “opportunistic investments a few times a year, if you will, when the High Table finds someone’s been misbehaving or the authorities request our help. The rest is more standard fare. But I think you’ll find the returns more than make up the sporadic payoff.”

“Define shattering, if you had to hazard.”

Caroline names a number from a recent opportunistic investment. Sollozzo’s brows reach his hairline.

“You can’t promise those returns.”

“You claim to be forward-thinking, Mr. Sollozzo, but you’re still thinking in yesterday’s numbers and hiding in yesterday’s technology because you think it keeps you safe. And as I said, this isn’t a hedge fund, and I’m not a hedge fund manager.”

“What are you, then?”

“I’m a futurist. And I’m very good at my job.”

Sollozzo laughs. It rattles around the room like a trapped bird. “That you are, Dr. Turing.” He nods, apparently satisfied. “Ten million it is.”

Caroline looks him dead in the eye and smiles a hunter’s smile. “No.”

He blinks, his smile faltering. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re pardoned,” Caroline returns easily. “Ten million is the regular buy-in. Your price is seventeen million.”

He blinks again, processing the number. “May I ask why?”

“Vito was shot four times. Michael Corleone fired three shots to kill the second man sent for him in the hospital. Seven bullets in total.” Caroline leans back into her chair, her smile dropping into a cool mask that sucks the air out of the room and takes any sense of ease along with it. “You asked what it would take for Santino to neglect Vito’s loyalty. And now I’m answering. One million per bullet.”

“Expensive bullets.”

“Vito is a loyal man. Santino is a businessman.”

“I do hope my price tag would be that high if Santino turned on me.”

“That depends on the price of your loyalty.”

Sollozzo chews on that for a moment, then nods. “You’ll get your seventeen million.”

“Lovely,” Caroline says, as though she expected to get it whether Sollozzo handed it over willingly or not. “You’ll see your returns in one month.”

“Too long.”

“This isn’t a bank any more than it’s a hedge fund,” Caroline says coolly. “The timeline is non-negotiable. You’ll see consistent revenue streams once we begin regular business over time.”

“I can’t afford to be out that much liquidity for a month.”

“Your need for liquid assets isn’t my concern,” Caroline returns, cooler still. “If you need an ATM, go to your small-time launderers and up your street price. But if you want an organizational bankroll that’s legal in every sense except the law, you come to me.”

Sollozzo stares at her.

She stares back.

He sighs. “You’ll get your seventeen million.”

Caroline’s faint smile returns, primly victorious. “Dr. Wren will be in touch with next steps. I’ll expect your buy-in by close of business on Friday.”

Sollozzo opens his mouth, but at Caroline’s arched brow closes it again. “Friday.”

“Good.” Frack glides to the door and pulls it open. “A pleasure, Mr. Sollozzo.”

“Dr. Turing.” Sollozzo stands and lets Frick herd him and his bodyguard out, Frack leading the way back down the stairs.

“He’s short seven million, isn’t he?” John says once he’s safely out of earshot.

“Ten, actually.” Caroline waits until Frick and Frack let them know that Sollozzo and his security have departed before hitting a button under her desk. The panels behind John shift and drop out of the way to reveal two screens, the panel under the window opening as a third screen slips into place between them. Three soldiers in a row, waiting for Caroline’s orders. She nods to him, firing up her computer and the screens behind him in a clear gesture of dismissal. “Flora will need you downstairs.”

He takes in the books on the shelves, all of which are about murder and vengeful ghosts. Considers _Cabal_ on Caroline’s desk, a page folded halfway through. Then says on a whim, “You wouldn’t have anything to do with Yvette’s collection of reading material, would you?”

Caroline’s lip twitches. “You have work to do.”

He nods and leaves, because he does.

Unlike when they arrived, Flora’s open meeting area is no longer a blank canvas, the gray couches and mirrored coffee table replaced by a peculiar menagerie: here a 17th-century French table, there a replica of Psalm 11 from the Utrecht Psalter, a sepia photo of the curled back of _Giovane Accovacciato_ almost as tall as Flora set against the mirrored glass in front of Flora’s office and, inexplicably, four prints of parrots set against a freshly turquoise wall. In the midst of it all is Flora herself, back and forth with the financier and his daughter debating various pieces in the room for inclusion in his house. He apparently has a full-size Christ on the cross which is literally Flora’s cross to bear given that it lords over the entryway and he flatly refuses to move it.

“Religious?” John murmurs when the financier leaves.

Flora snorts. “He has an oil painting of a rabbi three feet away from it, so no. Besides,” she gestures to the wall behind the financier’s now-vacant chair, bearing a daring wheat-paste image of a woman, “What do you think I’m test-running street art for? Modern Madonnas.” She settles under the said Madonna to flip through photos Tara shows her of furniture. “Thank god he’s in finance and not the business, or else he’d actually be that religious. You ever tried convincing mob wives who go to Mass daily to move crucifixes? It’s worse than skinning cats.”

John wonders what Carmela Corleone would make of the financier’s modern Madonna if she set foot in this room. Then again, Flora put a small replica of Hart’s _Cross of the Millennium_ on the living room coffee table and _Genesis_ on the dining room mantel, so he supposes she and the financier speak the same language. “What’s with the parrots?”

“That would be the daughter. She wants her room decorated like, quote, ‘parakeets with a touch of bunny’.” Flora picks up the daughter’s printed packet of parrot and bunny photos on the coffee table, waving it for emphasis before tossing it at Astrid to make it vanish into her desk.

Of course, Flora also sees her other clients in her office, some of whom appear not twenty minutes later. And based on the frankly astonishing collection in the wine storage room taking up the back half of the basement, she also speaks _their_ language. Fluently and with gusto. The Continental sommelier would be a bit starry-eyed.

When they leave, she plucks her way through the varietals for a minute before producing one with a proud flourish. “A present.”

“What for?”

“For fun.” She grins, nodding to the stairs to the garage in the corner of the storage room. “And work. What do you say to a business lunch with Turkish heroin dealers?”

After all, this is Flora’s showroom, not her inventory. They have a business lunch with Turkish heroin dealers, then an actual business lunch at Elaine’s with other bosses of the Five Families. Flora greets Elaine herself with a hug and a pack of Marlboros. “You save the best table for me, Elaine?”

“Wherever we are is the best table, baby,” Elaine replies, patting the table for Flora to sit as she looks John up and down. “You bring your new lover?”

“God, no, I barely have time for my lipstick, and my lipstick is the love of my life.” Flora smiles at the waiter setting a glass of white wine near her elbow. “He’s Santino’s.”

Elaine shakes her head fondly. “Does the heart good to see that boy doing well for himself.”

“Doesn’t it just?” Flora says, tugging on John’s sleeve to pull him into the seat next to her. John sits without comment, given that he mentally tripped three sentences ago. “Decked any fun customers lately?”

“Not lately,” Elaine replies with a tinge of regret. “It’s illegal. Time was when men were men. Now the fuckers just call a lawyer and sue me.”

“You own the place. Far as I’m concerned it’s a woman’s right to slug a guy she doesn’t like the look of. Besides, you know we’d spring you from the slammer any day of the week and twice on Sundays.”

Elaine grins. “You’d start a war for me?”

“Ten thousand ships strong.”

“Helen of Troy launched a thousand,” Elaine says, clearly delighted.

“Sweetie, that bitch Helen’s got nothing on you,” Flora replies brightly, nodding to the man in the bar in a cheap suit. “Send some fresh coffee to Agent Cooper for me?”

“Only if you flirt with the priest.” Elaine stands to make her way to the door to ream out the arriving patron, who looks to be a professor of some sort.

Flora does, toasting Elaine at the bar on her way back to the table. She also works the entire room, which in the course of their lunch hour includes a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, a curator for MoMa, a quiet poet, the former chief of the New York Fire Department, the current commissioner of the New York Police Department, a first baseman for the Mets, and the governor, along with the rotating door of riffraff sitting at the bar hoping for a table, clearly unaware that no table will ever come. Elaine’s is a seat-of-your-pants meritocracy where the prize status of regular is dished out solely by the restaurant’s namesake, and then only when she considers it worth her while.

The lunch also confirms John’s suspicion that Flora knows three-quarters of New York, and then only because the remaining quarter can’t afford her. “Sweetie, I can get you anything your little heart desires,” she quips at the MoMa curator. “Except decaf.” She exits that conversation with the curator’s promise to stop by her office that afternoon to chat with the artist she commissioned for her Madonnas and, in turn, her promise to set up a phone call that afternoon with Bedelia to leverage Bedelia’s network of gallery owners and curators for an exhibition of modern religious art in the fall.

Still, she is there to manage the New York underbelly, and meets with the current Stracci boss over zabaglione to talk about how much shit the Five Families are in and how much it’s worth to them to keep their shit together so Santino doesn’t directly interfere. The Straccis aren’t strictly opposed to opportunistic endeavors, but they’re also strictly opposed to giving Santino opportunities to snatch more of their business out from under them. Or, at least, they’re not eager to find out how many of their underbosses Santino and Caroline snatched out from under them while they weren’t looking and how many of those bosses have ambitions to impress Santino and Caroline for their efforts. In any case, the Straccis certainly aren’t keen for an embarrassment when the Tattaglias are already on Caroline’s shitlist. As a consequence, the Straccis willing to play nice for the time being. John, for his part, is thoroughly entertained watching them try not to look at him. Besides, Elaine’s feels more like sitting in a living room than a restaurant, and it’s far more soothing than the living room in the townhouse. Granted, Elaine’s is the living room of the higher-ups of the New York underground and has the coziness of a living room because the higher-ups of the New York underground jealously guard it as neutral territory with almost as much reverence as a Continental, which is, John supposes, a strong statement about Elaine Kaufman’s character.

They return to find Caroline waiting for them in the townhouse living room, dressed and clearly getting ready to leave, smiling at Flora as soon as she steps into the living room. “Hey sweetie, you busy?”

It’s kind of disturbing to hear Caroline utter Flora’s favorite term of endearment. And to see Caroline smile like that. Flora just grins back and steps behind her at the couch to loop an arm across her shoulders in a hug. “I always have time for you. Especially when it looks like you’re about to have fun.”

Caroline’s smile says she’s about to have a lot of fun, and it’s going to end badly for the recipients of her fun. “I need to borrow a few toys.”

“Define borrow,” Flora returns. “And toys.”

Caroline hums. “Borrow as in putting them to good use. And I’m thinking something pedestrians will read along the lines of arson in block letters about, say, ten feet high?”

Flora sniffs, wiping an imaginary tear from the corner of her eye. “One day they’re baby freshmen drinking cheap pints in London and the next day they’re blowing up New York. I’m so proud.” She grins with all her teeth. “Now?”

“Please.”

“How much firepower?”

Caroline clicks through her phone for a moment. “Enough to damage a vault. Separate charges strong enough to blow out windows and spark.”

“Dimensions and specs?” Caroline lists out details, Flora turning them in her head. “I’ve got just the thing.”

“Oh, and an incendiary grenade. And guns,” Caroline calls after her.

“What kind?”

Caroline rattles off a list. Flora grins and trots to the basement.

She returns momentarily with Mikkel helping her carry the toys. Caroline orders Frick and Frack to take the explosives to the car and drive out in exactly five minutes. She orders John to take the guns, a handgun among them, which she tells him to put at his left hip.

Flora lights up as soon as that order leaves Caroline’s mouth. “You’d better keep video evidence of this.” Which sounds suspiciously like this is going to be fun. Sure enough, Flora’s grin lights on him as soon as he settles in the entryway with his guns in place, calling over her shoulder as she makes her way to the stairs. “Have grand fun. I’ve got a curator to work and a man to con.”

Caroline stays with her eye on her watch in the entryway, still as a statue, and so John waits with Caroline in front of him and her replica standing over his shoulder in the mirror behind him. After a minute, she nods and stands. “There’s going to be a man strolling by,” she informs him as she opens the front door. “Leather jacket. Point your gun at his head. Don’t shoot.”

That kind of fun, then. He has a sneaking feeling he’s going to enjoy this outing.

Sure enough, there’s a man strolling by in a leather jacket who skids a full foot back when John stops him in his tracks with a gun to his head. “Whoa, what the hell, man?”

“Your phone, please,” Caroline says with a pleasant smile in the tone of one ordering a sandwich.

“Look, lady, I’m just minding my own—”

“Joey,” Caroline says, her pleasant smile still in place, “give me your phone before John tears your arms off.”

The man—Joey, apparently—blinks at her and digs his phone out of his pocket, holding it out cautiously.

“Unlock it.”

Joey blinks at her again but, upon glancing at John, apparently decides it’s not worth asking _what the hell_ again, unlocking his phone slowly and holding it out.

Caroline takes the phone and holds it to her ear as Frick and Frack pull the car out of the garage. “Good afternoon, Don Barzini.”

Pause.

“I gave you an opportunity to reach me. You just need to take the meeting.”

Pause.

“I think you’ll find I’m being quite reasonable. Given what happened to Don Corleone, Santino wants to ensure no one does anything rash.”

Pause.

“I’ll consider unfreezing your assets if I find after the meeting that you’re inclined to be reasonable.”

Pause. Caroline smiles.

“Wonderful. I’ll expect you in the townhouse this evening around six. Your associate has ten seconds to remove himself from my property or security will remove his liver. Beatrice hasn’t had a chance to run to the market yet and has a lovely Chianti in need of a main course.”

Pause. Caroline smiles wider at Joey, her eyes still unruffled and pleasant. Suddenly, Matteo gleefully relaying the story of that time five years ago when Beatrice served a mob boss his lover’s lungs when Santino wanted to make a point feels less like an urban myth.

“Actually, Don Barzini, I think it’s a necessary preview of what happens when I’m forced to be unreasonable.” The phone goes dead in her hand and she tosses it at Joey. “In the car, John.”

John waits a few seconds to make sure Joey bolts for his life, pausing to glance at the townhouse as he turns back to the car. He thought it was a trick of the light when they pulled up to the house the first time, but now he knows what Flora meant when she said there aren’t any direct sight lines to their offices—every window in the house is one-way mirrored glass.

Caroline pulls a tablet from her purse as she gives Frack an address and orders him to stop two blocks away. The tablet flares to life in her hands as they drive, populated by what looks like traffic feeds. She puts the cameras in a two block radius around the address on a loop, and by the time Frack stops where ordered, they’re invisible.

“See that church?”

There’s an old Catholic church about halfway up the block. “What about it?”

“It’s not a church. The Tattaglias use it to store a lot of their money. And their library of blackmail.”

Suddenly Flora’s borrowed toys make a lot more sense. “Dealing with the Tattaglias accordingly?”

“Yes.” Caroline taps the tablet to change the screen, glancing between the church and her screen. On closer inspection, it looks suspiciously like security feeds of the inside of a church. “There are six people in the pews and the priest at the front. They’re all Tattaglia security.”

John looks over her shoulder at the feeds. “The old lady?”

“Not as old or as feeble as she looks. And a crack shot with an automatic.” Caroline angles the tablet so he can see. “Start shooting from the back when you get through the door. Kill them all. Use the guns in your shoulder holsters. Six shots clean to the head before you make it to the first pew. A guard will run to the organ overlooking the pews when he hears you shooting, turn once you’ve got an angle on the organ for a seventh clean shot. Thirty seconds from the car to the last shot.”

“And the priest?”

“I’ll deal with him.”

Caroline is dressed for work. Her work. Because while both Caroline and Flora live exclusively in clothes made by the Continentale tailor just in case, Flora opts for pantsuits she can fight and hide weapons in, and while she never sets foot out the door without heels, her heels are always closed shoes with a sturdier heel she can sprint in without breaking her ankle. Caroline is in a tailored black dress and heels that would not look at all out of place on Wall Street but are certainly not suitable for running or fighting. Caroline lives in black and gray where Flora never leaves the house without something red, so Caroline won’t draw eyes the second she sets foot on the block, but that’s the extent of her advantage. Still, Caroline has paid business calls to armed partners for twelve years, so John can only assume she knows what she’s doing. “Don’t get shot. Santino will kill me.”

“I’m sure you know better than to give Santino a reason to kill you.” That…might be the closest thing to a compliment Caroline’s ever given him. “Frack, drop us off in front of the door. Stay put until we come back. We’ll be in and out in three minutes. Frick, wait until the eighth shot and come inside with the explosives. Drive.”

John’s starting to understand why Frick and Frack have killer poker faces.

As ordered, Frack pulls in front of the church. John gets out before Caroline, blocking the view of her from the sidewalk. Caroline smiles at him as they turn to the church, pressing into his right side to wrap her left arm around his waist before he has a chance to process what’s happening, trapping his other arm loosely with her right as leverage to lean in and hiss, “Play along,” in his ear.

He’s really starting to understand why Frick and Frack have killer poker faces. “This normally part of your plan?” he murmurs as they walk up the stairs.

“Variety is the spice of life,” Caroline replies as he pulls open the door. She steps through before him at an angle and releases his right arm as she does, though her left arm stays around his waist. Blocking him from view as he reaches under his jacket for his guns and guiding him forward again with her left arm, her hand slipping under his jacket as she does. “Twenty seconds.”

Then John steps through the door level with her as the priest steps forward, feeling Caroline’s hand close under his jacket at his hip as he draws a gun in either hand. Six clean shots ring out before those six people have a chance to turn toward the sound, Caroline stepping just behind him as he steps into a clear angle on the organ. A shot rings as he fires a seventh shot at the guard, and he whirls in time to see the priest drop like a rock, Caroline lowering the handgun to follow him down. She shot him in the thigh.

“Nice shot.”

“Thanks. Nice shots.”

“Thanks. Flora teach you to do that?”

“Who else?” Caroline glides to the priest, leveling the handgun at his head as John checks him for weapons. “Afternoon, Peter.”

“Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?” he snarls.

“What do you think? John, stand him up.” Frick steps through the church door a second later looking impressed by the speed. It’s nice to know John can break through his killer poker face. Caroline strides to him and opens the bag he sets on the pew, producing a rather nasty looking toy and an incendiary grenade. “Lay the explosives. We’ll be up in sixty seconds.” She turns back to John, gesturing for him to move. “Vault. Behind the altar and down the stairs. Four guards to kill en route.”

It’s pleasant, not being surprised by people trying to shoot him. Sure enough, there’s a vault behind iron bars with a passcode. Caroline nods to the priest. “Open it.”

“Don’t you have the passcode?” John asks, because knowing Caroline it would be more surprising if she didn’t.

“Yes,” Caroline replies, leveling her gun at the priest. “But I want his fingerprints on the pad.”

When the priest tries to protest, John gives him a hard shove into the bars. “They’ll kill me.”

“He’ll kill you,” Caroline retorts. “Open it.”

The priest glances between them and, after a moment’s hesitation, unlocks the vault. He doesn’t fight when John shoves him out of the way, but he does look incredulous when Caroline steps inside to rifle through the bag of money on the table and check some of the open deposit boxes. “You can’t carry all this out with you.”

Caroline smiles, dumping the entire bag of money into a heap on the floor. “I’m not.” She tucks her gun under her arm, starts the timer on the explosive and sets it on the table, then pulls the top off the grenade canister to light it and drops it on the money, stepping out of the vault just as the whole thing flares behind her and shooting the priest between the eyes on her way. “Let’s go.”

The bomb in the vault goes off with an impressive rending of metal as they’re halfway to the door. The rest of them go off in a mighty blast of flame and concussive force and flying glass when they pull to the side at the end of the block.

Caroline doesn’t look, though. She’s already on her phone.

“Flora, how are your news people?” Flora says something to which Caroline gives a satisfied nod. “Put Freddie on the Tattaglias’ burning church. I want it all over every cover and sent to every update-enabled device within the next twenty minutes.” She smiles wider at something Flora says and hangs up the phone, redialing immediately. “Good afternoon, Commissioner.”

Pause.

“Yes, Flora did send your regards, thank you.”

Pause.

“Yes, I do. Your officers just got a phone call for an explosion at the Tattaglias’ church. Jimmy and his partner.”

Pause. Caroline laughs.

“No, Commissioner. You’re going to let them take the call.”

Pause. Caroline smiles.

“Because there will already be news crews present when you arrive.”

Pause.

“No, Commissioner, they’re going to find the ashes of the Tattaglias’ blackmail and report them to evidence.”

Pause.

“Because you’re going to open an investigation into them, why else?”

Pause. Caroline’s smile takes a vicious edge.

“Because if you don’t, there will be an investigation into why you’ve been taking the Tattaglias’ dirty money for the last five years. And your wife will receive some photos of you she will not be happy to receive.”

Pause.

“I’m glad to hear it. You’ll find some relevant details will work their way into your investigation, as a token of our gratitude. Judge Bennett will be delighted to issue the warrants for you. A pleasure as always, Commissioner.”

That done, Caroline hangs up and pulls her tablet from her purse again to stitch together her looped feed with the explosion, her hands already at work as she barks an address to Frack. “Drive.”

They pay house calls for another few hours, some to Tattaglia money operations, some to launderers who didn’t heed Caroline’s cease-and-desist, and one memorable stroll into the middle of Sonny Corleone’s meeting with a corrupt politician in City Hall. Caroline works differently from Flora in that she’s not a fighter and doesn’t try to be. She’s a brutally efficient strategist marrying a chess master’s cold-blooded understanding of how to use pieces with a politician’s instinctive understanding of three-dimensional theatricality. Which isn’t to say that she’s never surprised. It’s to say that, like Santino, she doesn’t have any emotions to rattle and fear is something that happens to other people, so a surprise is little more than an occasionally interesting plot twist. 

It’s grand fun.

They return to the house to find Flora still away with the financier and Gianna already departed for the evening. Still, Flora texted Caroline a promise to be back in plenty of time for Don Barzini’s visit, so Beatrice gets to work on Caroline’s orders. Apparently, Barzini will not be staying for dinner, but he will be taunted by the lingering scent of it.

“Is your charcoal suit pressed?” Caroline asks, looking him up and down with an assessing eye.

“Should be.”

“Go get changed. Black shirt and tie. Beatrice will get this one cleaned.”

“Waistcoat?”

“Yes.”

“We’re making a statement to Barzini?”

“You and Flora are, yes.”

That kind of statement, then. “He need that strong of a statement?” He knows enough of that story to know Barzini has always been one of the most complicated of the Five Families to hold—he has more of his operation intact than the Tattaglias, Cuneos, or Straccis, but he’s not quite Vito Corleone either. Vito, as John understands it, cut some sort of deal with Santino before Giovanni died. No one knows what it was, exactly, just that it allowed him to keep his organization entirely intact and free to operate North America as he saw fit, it won him Santino’s backing to cement his empire, and he’s kept the other Five Families in line since Santino’s takeover to uphold his end of the bargain. No one knows how Barzini kept his operation more or less intact, given that the relative loyalty that allowed him to keep it and his willingness to stay on Santino’s leash has a very different flavor than Vito. No one can quite figure out what that flavor is, exactly, because on one hand, Santino clearly doesn’t like Barzini and Barzini is just as willing to be opportunistic as he is to be helpful, but on the other hand, Santino has entrusted him as his second most powerful partner in North America for twelve years and Barzini has always stepped up when Santino needed him, and everything between Point A and Point Z is gossip and conjecture which neither Santino nor Barzini have ever confirmed or denied. 

The only thing anyone knows for sure is that Santino, not Vincenzo, is the one keeping Barzini in line, and keeping Barzini in line is complicated.

“Emilio thrives under a firm hand.” Caroline nods up the stairs. “Go get changed.”

He does, though he does pause in the library to grab something first.

He returns just as Flora appears. Apparently Flora saw the real camera feed of the church if her smile at Caroline is any indication. “Don’t go making Santino think you’re out to steal his man, Caroline.”

“Only thing I’ve ever been with a man is disappointed.”

“That’s the spirit,” Flora cackles. Then her face settles into annoyance. “And speaking of disappointments.”

Caroline cuts her a dead-eyed look. “You would have been disappointed if I actually took the meeting with Emilio.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m happy to deal with Emilio,” Flora returns, dropping into a bar stool with a sigh. She refuses to let Barzini ruin her appetite, though, or her delight at handing over the financier’s files to Caroline for her meeting tonight.

Sadly, no good thing lasts forever, and the clocks show no sign of stopping their steady march toward six. “We meeting him in your office?”

Flora shakes her head. “Library.”

That’s different. “I’m surprised you want him that far from the front door.”

“I don’t,” Flora sighs, “but Emilio’s more irritating when there are distractions in the room and marginally more cooperative when he thinks he has the right to be comfortable.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Go sit. I need to freshen up.”

John’s not about to argue with that, so he takes his book from the table and makes his way to the library while Caroline and Flora get organized. He likes the library and its coziness—the wood paneling and overflow of books remind him of Rome, even if the record player and the Klimt above the mantel catch in his throat. He sits on the couch facing the mantel, because he flatly refuses to be that pathetic, but he still hides in his book until Flora comes back.

“Really, John?” He looks up to Flora tossing a copy of Flaubert’s _Three Tales_ in his face as she drops to couch, the one he left on her bed with a folded page. “ _A Simple Heart?”_

“The Father could never have chosen to express himself through a dove, for those creatures cannot speak,” John replies, tapping the cover before setting it on the coffee table. “For the financier’s daughter.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I got the joke.” Flora gives him a flat look even as her face curls in a laugh.

John shrugs. “You make jokes in all your rooms. Seemed fitting.”

“You’re the actual worst,” Flora says in delight.

“Are you going to use it?”

“Of course I’m going to use it. What do you take me for, a plebe?” Flora’s grin widens. “And we’re keeping you _forever_.”

“She’s not exaggerating when she says things like that,” Caroline says, appearing in the library to rest a hand on Flora’s shoulder. “I’m heading to the office for meetings with Harold to square away the financier. I’ll be back later.”

“I’ll check on Gianna after my meetings.”

Caroline nods. The hand on Flora’s shoulder squeezes, then lets go. “Be safe.”

“Boring,” Flora groans, grinning at Caroline’s quiet snort. “Give Harold my best. And make the financier squeal.”

“Always.”

“Video evidence,” Flora trills at Caroline’s retreating back. The grin vanishes as they hear the front door click shut behind Caroline, though, and she lets out a sigh, tugging John’s sleeve when he starts to stand up and assume the role of sentinel opposite Mikkel and Astrid. “You might as well get comfortable.”

He’s not about to argue with the invitation to stay put with Flora, but still. “You think Barzini will be difficult?”

“He’s always difficult,” Flora replies darkly.

Fantastic.

Flora sends Mikkel and Astrid to help Ariadne give Barzini an unfriendly greeting, so they have plenty of warning when Barzini comes upstairs. Even so, John is taken aback by how suddenly he feels Santino’s absence when Barzini appears in the library door. Barzini is smiling, not the arrogant smile Sollozzo wore but the smile of a man who is the second most powerful Cosa Nostra don in North America and knows it. It’s not the look he had in LA, but John is nonetheless thrown back to the dim VIP room above Club Hel and the feeling of hitting several wrong notes. Barzini is clearly quite comfortable in this room, in much the same way he was a few shades too familiar with Santino, and it makes John all the more aware that Santino isn’t here.

He figures out why as soon as Barzini opens his mouth—Barzini is just as aware of Santino’s absence as John. “Flora, dear. I was sorry to hear Santino couldn’t join you on this trip.” His gaze rests briefly on John, his smile taking an amused lilt. “Though I see he loaned you Mr. Wick for the occasion.” He doesn’t seem to be afraid of John the way the other dons were, or at least, he hides it better, though John can’t tell what about his presence in the room is so amusing to Barzini.

“He had more important things to do than be your keeper,” Flora replies, gesturing to a chair. A glance at Flora’s face confirms what her tone suggested—she’s not going to pretend to charm Barzini. John thinks of Caroline saying Barzini flourishes under a firm hand and thinks he probably should have clarified what that meant. “Sit.”

Barzini doesn’t sit, though—he makes his way to rest an elbow on the mantel, inspecting the painting hanging there. Flora has his attention, but he’s not paying attention to her the way he paid attention to Santino in Club Hel, and it leaves that discordant feeling floating free around the room like a haze of cigarette smoke. “You know, I remember Giovanni used to keep a crucifix hung above this fireplace.”

John tries to imagine a crucifix, though his imagination isn’t helped by the art that took the crucifix’s place—Klimt’s _Philosophy_ , where the formless void of humanity blots out the notion of anything else ever occupying its position. All he can imagine is Barzini meeting Giovanni in this room, though that’s mostly because Barzini is Giovanni’s age.

Flora is not amused. “I never look back. It distracts from the now.”

Barzini chuckles. “Shame. What ever happened to that crucifix?”

“Hell if I know,” Flora replies, standing to loop around the couch and make her way to the bar in the corner. “I told the boys to get to work with hammers in due speed, so I imagine it went in the pile along with the rest of the scrap lumber we threw away.”

Barzini laughs properly. “I imagine so, yes.” His eyes skim the room, his laugh sinking into the walls like he can peel back Flora’s handiwork to find the past festering underneath. “It’s almost a shame to see this room so changed, beautiful though it is. I still recall how lovely it was to meet Santino here for business all those years ago, when your father was still in charge.” Barzini tilts his head as though parsing a memory. “Actually, I think the first time I met Santino for business was in this room.”

Flora cuts him a look that could shatter lead. “You first met Santino in Elaine’s with Giovanni.”

“I first met Santino properly in this room,” Barzini amends, “and you at Elaine’s the day after. You were both fifteen at the time.” It’s still shades too familiar, though John can’t tell what about it is worth Barzini digging his heels in. John reminds himself that Santino doesn’t have a moratorium on being an arrogant asshole. Whatever it is he sees in Flora’s face is enough for Barzini to laugh. “I still recall the room fondly as it was back then, how vibrant it was. Full of life.”

“That’s funny,” Flora replies, snapping the bourbon closed, “I seem to recall this room being dark and miserable and in dire need of gutting.” She puts the bourbon down and sets a glass at the seat across from her, folding herself into the couch with her drink in hand. “Besides, it’s not Giovanni’s house anymore. It’s Santino’s.”

Barzini smiles as he sits like he already knows it will annoy Flora further. “And the house has grown up so very beautifully. Much like Santino and yourself.”

“Are you here to reminisce, Emilio, or are you here to remind me why it’s not worth my time to have Baba Yaga cannibalize your operation?” By Flora’s tone, reminiscing much longer will translate into cannibalism.

“There’s that famous temper, Flora. It’ll get you into trouble someday,” Barzini _tsk_ s. “I hoped Dr. Turing would join us as the voice of reason.”

“She and I agree that it’s a fruitless exercise to talk reason to the unreasonable, and sending your associate to stalk Caroline is unreasonable, Emilio. So instead, you get me.” Flora gives him a pointedly fake smile. “Or rather, you get to convince me that you’re not about to become a pain in my ass. I know it’s against your nature.”

“You seem unfairly convinced that I plan to capitalize on the tragedy of what happened to Don Corleone, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why.” Barzini even sounds like the suggestion genuinely wounds him.

Flora’s face says she’d like to actually wound him. “What can I say? I’ve always known you to be an opportunistic rat fuck.”

“There’s that temper again, Flora.” It’s a sign of how comfortable Barzini is in his power that he’s so willing to taunt Flora Rosalia in her own home. Especially when she can’t be bothered to keep up the charming veneer to reel him in like a fish on a hook.

“You haven’t seen the first inkling of my temper,” Flora says, her voice suddenly gone so cold it’s like running headlong into an iceberg. “Nor have you given me a reason to trust you, and you need at least ten, given that Santino had to fly to LA to clean up after you.”

“The incident with the Moscones was an unfortunate marital spat, but it wasn’t my handiwork.”

“It’s your job to keep your caporegimes in line, especially with regards to Santino’s money. And right now, you’re not giving him many good reasons to keep you on as godfather.”

Barzini’s brow raises in challenge. “Are you suggesting a coup?” He sounds like she’s challenging him to a rousing tennis match.

“You know full well I wanted to cut off your head and your fragile bits years ago. But,” Flora sighs, clearly disappointed, “sadly, I’m here to keep the peace.” Her gaze hardens. “Unless you give me a reason not to. So you can give me a reason to keep the peace, or you can just give me a reason.” 

“How about a compromise, then? I deliver you the Tattaglias and keep the peace as a goodwill gesture, and in exchange, Santino and I carry on as we have before.”

“We already have the Tattaglias,” Flora says flatly. “Try again.”

“I did see that bit of news, and I applaud Dr. Turing for her craftsmanship.” Barzini shifts in his chair, his chess face finally settling into place. “But the Tattaglias don’t want to compromise. They want a fight, and they seem to think they don’t have much to lose.” He inclines his head to Flora. “You and I both know they do, of course, but they are rather wounded about the church, and they want to take it out on the Corleones.”

“Do I look like I need your help with the Tattaglias?”

Barzini chuckles, another indulgent laugh as if talking to a teenager. “I have absolute faith in your ability to crush them under your thumb, Flora, and in Santino’s ability to turn their days into living hell.” He sounds like he’d enjoy watching the last bit.

“Well then,” Flora smiles at him like a slap in the face, “sounds like we have things under control, Emilio. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“For now,” Barzini replies. “But you and I both know you won’t be in New York forever, and the Corleones will be in disarray while Sonny takes over to re-negotiate peace. And the Tattaglias aren’t going to forget that church so easily, even if they agree to your terms for now.”

“What do you propose, then?”

Barzini smiles. Properly this time. “Your success as a businesswoman comes in delegation, Flora. I’m suggesting that you delegate now. I’ll keep the Tattaglias in line while the Corleones get their house in order with Sollozzo. Keeping the established order, as a gesture of goodwill after poor management with Nicky Moscone.”

Flora raises an eyebrow. “And how do I know you’re not full of shit?”

“Because I’m an opportunistic rat fuck. I’m not suicidal. And unlike the Tattaglias, I have an eye for the bigger picture.” He gestures broadly around the room, as if to Santino’s absence. “Open skirmishes will only disrupt smooth business. I have just as much to gain by keeping the peace as you do.”

“You want to help us?” Flora says it like he’s suggesting setting them on fire. 

“Is it really such a surprise that I want to help Santino?”

“I know all about your help.” Flora says it like he stabbed Santino once and she’s still figuring out what revenge is equal to it. 

Barzini’s smile remains like he already knows Flora can’t get revenge on him until Santino allows it, and that thought seems to amuse him more than the thought of watching Santino's wrath from the VIP booth. “I’ve helped Don Corleone keep the peace these twelve years, Flora. I’ve always come when Santino asked me to and plenty of times he didn’t. I’m merely offering to carry on as we always have.”

Flora stares at him.

He stares back.

Flora sighs. “They agree to my terms to the letter. And if the Tattaglias step one toenail out of line, it will come down on your head.”

Barzini smiles wider. “Of course.”

“No.” Flora’s eyes narrow. “You want responsibility for them? You’re taking responsibility for all of them. And if an associate sworn in yesterday sneezes the wrong way, our agreement is void and you’re both fair game. Understood?”

“Understood.”

They spend another hour negotiating Flora’s terms to the letter. But in the end, Barzini agrees. The door doesn’t quite hit him on the way out, but it’s a near thing.

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

“Oh look,” Flora says to Astrid and Mikkel in a tone of revelation, “he does have functioning eyeballs.”

“Just observing.” John shrugs. “Santino doesn’t like him much either.”

“What’s not to like?” Flora mutters, though her eyes are on him. Assessing, and John can’t tell what for. “If you’re just observing, then what have you observed about Emilio?”

“Just that you and Santino don’t like him,” John says carefully. “Caroline either. I think. Harder to tell, given that Caroline only likes two people.”

“Is that all?”

John shrugs again. “Is there more that I need?”

“You tell me.”

He has the distinct feeling of tiptoeing through a minefield, though he’s not sure how or when he stumbled into one. “You and Santino don’t like him. That’s all I know about him, and until I’m told otherwise, that’s all that’s relevant.”

“That was a surprisingly diplomatic answer.”

“You don’t pay me to be diplomatic.”

“True.” Flora sets down her drink. “Well, fun though that wasn’t, we have other things to attend to. Things that don’t require diplomacy.”

That would be the Tattaglias, who show up in Flora’s office a few hours later. They are not amused by Caroline blowing up their church and dizzy when they run into the wall of Flora’s charm on full blast. Still, Barzini clearly met with them before they arrived, because despite the token fight, they’re more or less amenable to the terms Flora shoves down their throats. It helps that, despite their anger about the church, they have the good sense to be wary of Caroline and terrified of Flora, given how the D’Antonios helped Vincenzo bring them to heel all those years ago.

Halfway through the negotiation, John’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it, but then it buzzes again. And again.

Three texts from Gianna. Four words.

 _k_ _idnapped_

 _R_ _ussians_

_bring guns_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, a cliffhanger. You didn't really think it would be that easy, did you?
> 
> The townhouse dining room is lifted straight from the real one, so if you look at the photos in this story, you'll know exactly what it looks like: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/design-firm-sawyer-berson-manhattan-townhouse
> 
> Cabal is a novella by Clive Barker that's kind of about werewolves, printed in a short story collection of the same name. It was an interesting read if you're looking for marginally more highbrow werewolf fare. 
> 
> I wish I could take credit for "parakeets with a touch of bunny", but kids are more creative than fiction. I got it from this (the same TriBeCa apartment whose decor inspired Santino's in Rome): http://www.moniquegibson.com/featured-projects/tribeca-loft?view=slider. The bit with the life-sized Christ on the cross and the oil painting of a rabbi is credited to John Mellencamp: http://www.moniquegibson.com/featured-projects/island-retreat. The wheat paste image of a woman is from a real mural by Swoon which temporarily lived in the home of Monique Gibson, who uses her home as a test canvas for clients and was the inspiration for Flora's office. You can see the mural here: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/monique-gibsons-new-york-city-home-is-a-live-work-dream. I suspect Carmela would not approve. 
> 
> Elaine's is a real restaurant in New York and Elaine Kaufman is real, or at least, it was a real restaurant until Elaine Kaufman died in 2011. We live in an alternate reality where Elaine Kaufman is alive and well. And yes, Elaine's was actually that ridiculous in real life. Flora's conversation with Elaine is lifted almost word-for-word from this: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/06/out-to-lunch-kaufman200906. Here's more on the restaurant itself if you're curious: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2002/07/elaine-kaufman. 
> 
> Hope you liked the church because it was a monster to choreograph. Also, that thing John throws in the first movie to light the vault in Viggo's church is apparently called an incendiary grenade, at least according to this: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/John_Wick. I spent 30 minutes digging for that so you don't have to. You're welcome. 
> 
> Fun fact: it is entirely possible to sprint in heels without breaking your ankle, though it would take practice to do it safely and it is not recommended by any running coach ever. Sprinting stride is different from jogging stride—only the ball of your foot hits the ground so you can focus your power on driving your knees. I got the idea from a Tumblr post. 
> 
> John references a quote from A Simple Heart by Gustav Flaubert, regarded in many literary circles as one of the best short stories ever written. It's the story of a servant woman who comes to own a pet parrot, Loulou, who she eventually regards as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Highly recommend if you have the time.


	9. let’s take jesus off the dashboard, got enough on his mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is sent to rescue Gianna (with a little help from the voice of God) and in the process meets Flora for the first time. Conversations are had and massacres observed (though some are more awkward than others) and John finally gets back to where he belongs to have an overdue conversation with Santino (with a little help from Santino's sister and his best friend).

Well.

Shit.

John glances up from his phone. Flora is still arguing with the Tattaglias, though it’s a downhill fight at this point. Astrid raises an eyebrow, but John stays focused on Flora, waiting for a pause in the conversation. When the Tattaglias pause to compare notes among themselves, John glides forward to Flora’s shoulder and leans down to murmur in her ear. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Bit busy here,” she replies, her smile still in place and her eyes on the Tattaglias.

John holds his phone in front of her.

Flora stops smiling.

“Would you excuse me for a moment, gentlemen?” Flora doesn’t wait for their response, standing from her chair to stride into her office with John at her heel, pulling the door shut behind him. Then she turns back to John.

There’s a moment where layers of Flora fall away from her face, leaving a wave of implacable fury that reverberates down to the subway lines. She looks like she’s considering the value of screaming, as though all the industrial soundproofing in these walls won’t keep the men outside from hearing her. She pulls her phone from her pocket and holds it up like she’s considering heaving it into the wall, then decides against it, dialing and putting the phone on speaker as she settles into her desk chair. The industrial soundproofing might not keep the men outside from hearing her scream, but it’s certainly enough to keep them from eavesdropping on a phone call.

Caroline picks up after three rings. “In the middle of something, Flora.”

“Not anymore you’re not.” Flora’s voice is different, stripped of all her layers of warmth and leaving a glimpse of something else behind like the glint off a scalpel blade. “Gianna’s been kidnapped. Russians.”

Caroline exhales. They hear her shuffling away, the sound of a door closing. “I thought you were keeping an eye on her.” Which sounds like Caroline for _how the fuck did this happen?_

“I’m not her keeper,” Flora replies, just crisp enough to tell Caroline to sit on her heels. “In case you’d forgotten. I had other business to attend to with John, and we pay Cassian a generous salary for a reason. I wasn’t worried about her in the middle of the Met.”

The line is silent for a breath. Caroline sighs. “How long ago was this?”

Flora glances at John’s phone. “He just got the text. Can you find her?”

“If they haven’t tossed the phone yet.” Caroline goes silent for a moment, tapping, then scoffs. “She’s in a warehouse outside the city. What kind of kidnapper doesn’t take the hostage’s phone?”

“The kind that get people killed by accident.” Flora lets out a long gust of air as she turns to John. He doesn’t recognize her eyes with that expression, even though he has the dawning feeling that he’s finally meeting the real Flora. “Go get her secured. I’ll bring the cavalry when we’re done.”

“Why not send the cavalry now and get it over with?” Caroline says through multitasking.

“Because I’m in the middle of something.” Flora shoots a look at the phone like she’d rather like to shoot it with bullets. “In case you haven’t noticed, Baba Yaga’s a nuclear warhead. He’ll be fine.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. Chiyoh can hold her own.”

“I can’t send the cavalry right now,” Flora says, enunciating each syllable to hit on the sharp edges, “because I’m in the middle of making the Tattaglias grovel and the cavalry is preoccupied squaring away a supply line for our boy. Also, I don’t want Gianna to get shot.”

Somehow, John suspects Gianna not getting shot isn’t high on Caroline’s priority list. As confirmed three seconds later. “Can’t he just shoot her and be done with it?”

“I’m not going to shoot her,” John says as Flora choruses the same thing.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s Santino’s sister?” Caroline seems to forget this fact from time to time.

Caroline doesn’t answer, but the radiation coming out of the phone speaker says that Gianna being Santino’s sister is not a sufficient reason for John not to shoot her and be done with it. “You’re in the house?”

“Yes.”

Caroline is silent for a moment but for the sound of typing. Then she rattles off a list of guns for Flora to give to John, along with a comm, which she orders him to put in his ear immediately.

“Stay on the line.” Flora stands and gestures for him to follow, flinging open her office doors to smile brightly at the Tattaglias. Her eyes are the same, though, and John can see the men mentally take a step back. “I’ll be with you in a moment, gentlemen. Wait here.”

The security boys shift their weight from their stations around the room, just enough to remind the Tattaglias they’re within easy firing lines. Flora marches past them without waiting for a response, striding across the room and unlocking the door to the wine storage room, locking the door behind them as Mikkel and Astrid close ranks on the other side.

“Give me the list again, Caroline,” Flora says, setting the phone down on the counter. Caroline does. Flora makes her way around the room as if shopping for vintage, which she is—hitting switches in the wall to pull panels of wine shelves aside and reveal an armory’s worth of guns, which she plucks from the walls and sets on the counter, pulling aside the black and white Warhol silkscreen of a revolver to produce spare magazines and silencers, making quick work of putting the silencers on. Then she reaches in a drawer and fishes in a black Faraday bag to produce a set of small comms made to fit in his ear without being seen, which she hands to John before producing a second set for herself. “Put this in your ear.”

As soon as he does, Caroline’s voice intones as if she’s speaking from within his own head. _Can you hear me?_

It’s like having Caroline as his conscience, which is a disturbing thought. “Give me a bit of warning next time.”

 _Get the guns._ Flora hands them over one by one as Caroline talks, tucking her own comm out of sight in her ear and the second in her pocket. _We can’t afford to start a war with the Russians and Flora_ _will_ _need you tonight to_ _mop up this mess_ _, which means we don’t have time to do this the old-fashioned way. So I’m going to give you instructions, and you’re going to follow them without question and not take the comm_ _s_ _out until I tell you to. Understood?_

“Understood.”

He looks up at Flora to find her smiling, though not the smile he’s seen on her face before—the smile of a Flora Rosalia with a triple-digit body count. “You’re in for a treat.” She steps around the counter and stands on her tiptoes to peck his cheek. “Don’t get shot without me. I’ll meet you when I’m done.”

He nods once and steps around her, making his way to the back of the cellar for the stairs to the garage.

 _Get the Charger_ , Caroline tells him as he walks. _I’m going to give you directions and green lights the whole way, but you’re going to have to think fast. Can you do that?_

He revs the Charger and peels onto the street in reply.

Caroline gives him instructions the whole way, turning lights green as soon as he’s within their vicinity and sidestepping cops. It’s a rare day that John is grateful for his training, but this is one of them—his thinking mind switches off as soon as the Charger turns on East 80th Street, and Caroline’s speed means anyone with lesser reflexes would have crashed within the first block. It’s the fastest he’s ever driven in New York, time falling away as soon as he turns onto East 80th Street, and he tucks the car in a side alley with the warehouse in sight before he realizes he’s no longer in motion and well outside Manhattan.

 _Get out of the car, John._ Caroline's voice sounds different now that they’re standing still.

“Why am I this far out from the warehouse?” He still gets out, though, because his mind is still on autopilot.

_They’ve wired_ _it_ _to blow, which means they’ll probably start the detonator once they know you’re there. So we’re going to be quick about it._

Caroline’s voice never betrays any indication of stress or concern as he wreaks a largely silent path of destruction through the warehouse. Her voice has an odd lilt sometimes as it did while he was driving, but Caroline never falters, no matter how quickly she gives instructions while masking him from cameras at the same time. She just keeps giving him directions in the same measured tone— _shoot left 45 degrees, two gunmen around the corner, detonator is live_ —always two steps ahead, never once faltering.

_Take the door three feet to your left. Gianna’s in the basement. One minute._

He finds Gianna in the basement sitting in a chair with her legs crossed, her handcuffs dangling from one finger, and an unconscious Russian at her feet. “You’re late.”

“You’re supposed to be in the Met,” John retorts, reloading his gun.

“Fair.” Gianna holds out a hand for the gun. “Can I borrow that?”

John raises an eyebrow but holds it out.

She takes it and shoots the Russian three times in the head.

“That was unnecessary.”

“That was satisfying.” She shoves him out of the way with her foot, handing John the gun back. “Fucking creep.”

_Forty seconds._

“Let’s go.”

Gianna follows him up the stairs, looking hopefully around the warehouse as they reach the main floor. “You leave any of them alive?”

_Thirty seconds._

“Irrelevant. We’re leaving.”

“Boring.” She still doesn’t fight when he hauls her out of the warehouse by her elbow, though she does protest when he throws her into the passenger seat and whips out of the alley quickly under Caroline’s instructions to turn left. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

_Ten seconds. Haul ass in a straight line._

“You said you didn’t leave any of them alive.”

John presses down on the accelerator, grateful to fate or a Caroline-produced traffic jam for a clear stretch of road. “No, I said we’re leaving.”

“Why—” she gets her answer in the form of a burst of orange flames behind them as they fly away, loud enough to rattle the windows. “That was the warehouse, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

_Well done, John._

Gianna blinks at him. “What would you have done if I tried to find Russians to kneecap?”

“Carried you out.”

 _Stay straight and take the next right. Cops are coming_. He pushes down on the accelerator, seeing the light from the flames behind him.

Gianna blinks at him again, then turns in her seat to stare back at the flames in idle fascination until they whip around a right turn. “They said they wanted to ransom me. Although that would explain why the creep was prattling on about his dead brother.”

Goddammit all. “You’re running an art forgery ring. How did you wander into a blood feud?”

“Irrelevant.”

_Left. Flora’s_ _calling_ _you._

He turns left. “Relevant enough for you to get kidnapped.” His phone buzzes. He puts it on speaker and tosses it between them, because driving with both hands is not optional with Caroline. “Yeah, Flora?”

“You shot her yet?”

“Fuck you, Flora,” Gianna calls without missing a beat.

“Missed you too, glad you’re not dead in a ditch. John, you clear? Caroline said the place just went up.”

“We’re clear.”

“What the fuck did Gianna do that Russians wanted to blow her up?”

“Blood feud.”

“She’s running an _a_ _rt_ _ring,_ for fuck’s sake,” Flora sighs. “Gianna, darling, I’m going to wring your fucking neck.”

“This wasn’t my fault.”

“We’ll see about that. John, where are you headed?”

_Continental. Right._

“Continental,” he replies, taking the turn sharper than he needs to.

“I’ll get a room and wait for you there. Then we’ll deal with this.” Then Flora’s gone, and it’s just John taking Caroline’s directions. And Gianna in the passenger seat.

It’s strange to be in the car with Gianna, and it takes a few seconds to realize why—somehow, this is the first time he’s been somewhat alone with her.

“We don’t need to go to the Continental.”

 _Straight through the next light._ “We’re trying to avert a war here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” John replies, weaving around a car as he peels through the light.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

 _Follow this street until the third street on the right._ John counts streets and turns without comment.

“Oh come on, John,” Gianna says, turning in her seat to face him. “You had fun, admit it.”

 _I’m killing the cop car to your left. Mind the van in front of you_. “A warehouse full of Russians wired to explode is not my idea of fun,” John replies, weaving around the van.

Gianna laughs. “You’re full of shit, you know.”

“You’re still going to the Continental.”

“Come on, John. I can’t work in the Continental.”

 _Take the next right_. “That’s the whole point.”

“The ring is busy. We can’t stand still when work is going well.”

“So well you wound up in a blood feud with Russians,” John says flatly, taking the right a half-second after Caroline turns the light green.

“That was uncalled for.”

“Be grateful we’re not shipping you to the house in Southampton,” John tells her, weaving around cars as they get closer to the bridge into the city. 

“ _Boring_ ,” Gianna groans. It’s a guaranteed distractor—all of them hate the place in Southampton with a burning passion. “The townhouse is a fortress. I’ll be fine.”

 _Straight through the next light_. “A fortress in the middle of Manhattan. No.”

The radio switches itself on without either of them touching it, Caroline’s voice ringing through the speakers. _Stop distracting him while he’s driving. Turn left_.

John’s not distracted, but he takes the left harder than strictly necessary, throwing Gianna into the car door in the process.

“That’s creepy as shit, Caroline,” Gianna snaps, glaring bloody murder as she rights herself. It loses effect given that she’s glaring murder at a car radio.

The radio switches itself back off again, and the car falls silent but for Caroline intoning in his head.

Pulling to a stop outside the Continental is disorienting, both because they haven’t stopped once since they pulled out of the warehouse and because John’s gotten used to other Continentals. He still marches around the car and hauls Gianna out by her arm.

“That isn’t necessary,” Gianna snaps, yanking her arm free.

John raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t give me that look. I’m not going to run.”

“I know you’re not. If you run, I’ll shoot you.”

“You can’t shoot me on Continental grounds.”

“We’re not inside the Continental. And I’m not going to shoot you inside the Continental, I’ll just carry you.”

“No need for humiliation,” Gianna sighs, straightening her shoulders and striding into the Continental like it was her own damn idea. She’s still shorter than he is, though, so he overtakes her within a few steps, ignoring the daggers she shoots at his back when he does.

“Evening, Charon.”

“Good evening, Mr. Wick.”

“I believe Miss D’Antonio has been checked into a room.”

Charon smiles the same faint smile he uses to greet someone checking in or someone bleeding to death in front of him and holds out a room key. “Of course, Mr. Wick. Miss Rosalia is upstairs waiting for you.”

John takes the key and herds Gianna into the elevator before she can comment.

They walk in to find Flora sitting in a chair with a compact mirror retouching lipstick in a shade of red like murder, the cavalry spread out around her and an impressive collection of guns spread out on the table. Between Gianna’s security detail and the oppressive heat radiating from Flora, there’s no breathing room at all.

“Good evening, cousin dearest.” Flora’s mirror snaps shut as she turns to smile at Gianna, and then John recognizes that heat—anger with the fathomless burning energy of a white hole, more anger than it seems possible to fit in tiny Flora. “I do hope you brought a toothbrush and a magazine.”

If Gianna’s surprised by Flora’s anger, she doesn’t show it. That or she hides it under her annoyance. “I appreciate the knight in shining armor, but I don’t need to stay here.”

Flora’s smile is a baring of teeth. “Is that so?”

“I can’t work here. I have my art ring to run.”

“My art ring,” Flora replies crisply, “and not anymore, you don’t.”

“What is this, a timeout?”

“I prefer unscheduled quiet time for reflection and personal growth.”

“I’m not seven, Flora.”

“And I tried rallying my fuck army, but they got defeated sometime around when Baba Yaga got a text about Russians, kidnapping, and guns while I was in the middle of putting a war down.” Flora holds her arms out, gesturing to the cavalry. “Fortunately, my actual army rallied to the cause of cleaning up your clusterfuck.”

“There’s no clusterfuck to clean. I’m out. We’re fine. We’ll carry on operations.”

“No, we are not fine, because you’re the D’Antonio heir and actions have consequences,” Flora replies, even as a right hook. “You were kidnapped and Santino can’t let that stand. Next thing you know, word’s going around that the Camorra’s gone soft and then it’s nothing but work, work, work all the time.”

“The ring has nothing to do with the Camorra.”

“You’re the D’Antonio heir. Everything you do has to do with the Camorra.” The waves of anger radiating from Flora pick up a warning hum, one that says the guns on the table aren’t far enough out of her reach. “And we’ll talk later about what the fuck you did to get Russians so pissy about a blood feud they tried to blow you up.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Gianna snaps, “but I’ve managed operations here for a month on my own. I can take care of this.”

“And I don’t know if you’ve pulled your head out of your ass at any point in the last month, but Vito Corleone was shot in the middle of the street in broad daylight,” Flora snaps back with a warning of teeth. “We’re trying to keep the Five Families from breaking the Covenant in open war. I’m here to protect my brother’s interests, not babysit.”

Gianna isn’t as afraid as she ought to be. “I’m here to protect my brother’s interests just as much as you are, cousin dearest,” she says, her eyes flashing. “In case you’ve forgotten.”

“You’ve got some kind of nerve talking to me about protecting Santino’s interests,” Flora says, her voice dropping the room temperature twenty degrees. “Because if you honestly want to stand there and tell me that starting a war with the Russians when one of Santino’s longest-standing loyalists was gunned down in the street is protecting his interests, I’ll tear your fucking spine out through your throat and beat you with it.”

John has seen Flora work on many an occasion. He’s always known her to be capable and knows, intellectually at least, what she’s capable of. But he’s never had the clear feeling that she’s dangerous, and that feeling is now strong enough to choke.

That’s enough to put Gianna on her heels. Or at least translate that this is a battle she’s not destined to win. The fight leaks out of her shoulders even as she stares Flora down. John’s not sure how she still has eyesight. “Don’t tell Santino about this.”

Flora laughs. It’s kind of unnerving. “Sweetheart, that ship has _sailed_.”

“We’re cleaning this up. If you tell him he’ll just take the ring back.”

“You’ll be lucky if all he does is take the ring back, once he finds out his lover boy almost got blown up in a warehouse full of Russians because of you.” Flora smiles. It’s very unnerving. “I’d make your peace with the big man upstairs and pray for a gun in place of dull objects, if I were you.”

“Seriously?” Gianna looks John up and down. “Santino has more game than I gave him credit for.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Flora says, smiling hard enough to take an eye out. “And my brother is _very_ possessive of what’s his.”

Gianna snorts. “We already knew he was a selfish bastard.”

Flora’s smile is vicious. The lipstick helps. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“Russians,” John snaps, because he’s reasonably certain there’s no longer an imminent risk of Flora murdering Gianna.

Flora’s smile shifts into a 100-watt grin and crinkled eyes as she turns to him. It does nothing for the rage still dancing in her face that says she could turn Manhattan to ash if someone left a can of gasoline within a ten-block radius. “He’s so _cute_ when he’s embarrassed. But,” she nods, turning back to Gianna, “we’ve got your shitshow to clean up.” She holds out a hand. “Phone.”

“Bite me.”

“I’ll take your hand off at the rate you’re going.” Flora’s face says she’d even enjoy it.

“Debbie and Lou will call that number.”

“What do you think I want your phone for?” Flora wiggles her fingers. “Give.”

John has the distinct feeling Flora will separate Gianna from her arm if she doesn’t. It seems Gianna does too, because she fishes the phone out and hands it to Flora.

“See?” Flora preens. “You give me the best presents. Behave and I’ll even answer them in character.” She turns to Cassian and says, “If she tries to leave, shoot her.”

“No business conducted on Continental grounds,” Gianna says even as she drops to sit on the bed. “He’s not going to shoot me.”

Flora cuts her a poisonous look which ramps up to black widow venom when it turns on Cassian. “If she tries to leave and you shoot her, you’ll be excommunicated. They have a taste for clean kills and poetics, which means,” she picks up a handgun from the table, shoves the magazine in, and aims the barrel between Cassian’s eyes, “execution style. Instantaneous. Won't even know you’re dead.” She lowers the gun with a bright smile. “Now I want you to imagine what’s going to happen if Santino finds out John Wick got hurt because you couldn’t keep Gianna in a hotel room. If you’re lucky, he’ll be angry enough just to shoot you in the chest in a snit.” The barrel raises to level with Cassian’s heart. “Ten minutes to drown in your own blood. Fifteen if you’re stubborn.” Cassian stares her down, though Flora’s fury must be suffocating at close range.

John wonders if he should get the gun out of Flora’s hands before she decides she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about excommunication.

Thankfully, Flora puts the safety on, flips the gun around, and holds it out to Cassian. “Don’t let her leave. Or wait to shoot her when both feet are outside the front door. Makes no difference to me.”

“You say the nicest things,” Gianna grumbles.

“Love you too, sweetie. And Cassian?” Flora makes quick work of arming herself and strides for the door. “We’ll talk later about how the fuck your ward got kidnapped in the middle of the Met.” John wonders if there will be anything left of Cassian after that conversation. “Come on, boogeyman. I’ve got some Berettas itching to make Russian roadkill.”

John falls into step, Flora’s cavalry filing out of the room behind them.

“Had enough fun yet?” Flora says as he comes up alongside her outside the door.

“What kind of fun are you making?”

“The kind with a lot of bullets.”

“Sounds like my kind of party.”

Flora flashes a grin up at him, the kind made for tearing throats out. “I’m stealing you from Santino more often.” They file into the elevator, letting the doors close once Flora’s security are inside. Even Mikkel and Astrid press back against the wall for distance from Flora’s anger, leaving John standing alongside her in a bubble.

It’s only because John’s had Caroline in his head all night that he doesn’t jump when she says _Glad we got the gang together again_. Flora, however, jumps a full foot in the air.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” she snarls at the empty air. The cavalry exchanges nervous looks, which is when John realizes Caroline is only talking to him and Flora. “You want to give me a heart attack?”

 _Next time, I’ll use Rage Against the Machine_.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Flora mutters, glaring at the elevator buttons. The cavalry looks rather nervous. “What the fuck did Gianna do to end up in a blood feud?”

Silence. 

After twenty seconds, John thinks Caroline is still looking into it. Then Flora mutters, “I’m going to fucking kill her,” and he realizes that Caroline switched to speaking directly into Flora’s head.

 _Oh, now you want to kill her._ Apparently, it’s perfectly fine for John to hear that part of the conversation. _I wanted to kill her two hours ago._

 _“_ No business on Continental grounds,” John says, just in case.

“ _Shut up_ ,” they both chorus.

_Flora, take_ _Mikkel_ _and_ _Astrid_ _and get in the Charger with John before I change my mind about hacking the camera feeds. The rest of them will follow._

It’s astonishing how much rage can be folded like origami to fit into tiny Flora. It shouldn’t be possible to have that much violence in such a small person. But her wrath is as wide and deep as the Atlantic, the surface barely skimmed as the hours wear on. It pours out of her like a biblical flood, slowed only by the rate at which she can acquire more bullets. And if the bullets take too long, she turns whatever she can find within reach into a weapon.

That’s not what’s terrifying about her.

What’s terrifying is that she adapts to Caroline in her head immediately, as though she’s the one who had Caroline in her head for the last two hours. As though it’s second nature. She doesn’t even look half the time she kills, just points and throws and slashes and swings as if she already knew exactly where someone would stand for her to kill them and knows the most effective way to kill the moment they land in the right place. It’s ballet, watching Caroline’s precision combine with Flora’s sheer brutality, the steady hum of her anger swirling around a still point. And with John next to her, with Caroline also in his head, well. The first club doesn’t see them coming. The second club catches a whiff of a red tide of massacre sweeping through Manhattan, but not soon enough to seek high ground. The third club meets them with guns, not that it does them any good.

It occurs to John at some point in the third club, when he sees blood pour over Flora’s head after she cuts a man’s throat, that it’s a good thing that Flora has Caroline in her head putting all her violence into focus. Otherwise, Flora wouldn’t stop killing until she ran out of people to kill. Also, it’s a good thing that John is only vaguely irritated by this and consequently remains the coolheaded one. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anyone left alive in Manhattan by dawn.

Caroline can’t stop Flora from laughing, though.

The fourth stop is a warehouse, and they know death and the boogeyman are coming, but Caroline has Chiyoh, Ariadne, and a team of Flora’s men meet them there with fresh supplies. It’s also a familiar location.

“This is the Tarasovs’ territory,” John tells Flora and Caroline. “Abram runs his half of the operations here.”

 _I know_ , Caroline says. For the first time all night, she sounds entertained. _They’re both home, too_. _Getting antsy with news of the clubs._

Flora giggles with a manic grin. “What do you say to paying your old boss a friendly house call?”

John turns to the weapons case Ariadne opened on the car hood and, after a moment’s consideration, opts for the ARWEN 37 and loads it with incendiary grenades, suddenly hearing Viggo snap at him to stay that night in his living room. He takes aim as Caroline tells him to start a fire and not a firebombing and fires thinking of all the years he spent on Viggo’s leash, Flora whooping as it flares. Then he hands it off to Ariadne and offers Flora his arm. “Let’s go ring the doorbell.”

Flora giggles again, looping her arm in his as Chiyoh fires at the henchmen running to meet them. “We’re keeping you _forever_.”

By the time they put the blood feud to rest and leave Viggo and Abram nursing a healthy fear of death and the boogeyman, the sky is the pitch black of an ungodly hour. Flora is covered in blood and drunk on the giddiness of the violence.

“You’re _fantastic_ ,” she crows in delight, pushing her way through the door of the townhouse. “I’m stealing you from Santino _way_ more often.”

“Somehow I think he’d protest,” John replies mildly, steering her around the carpet and up the stairs, seeing the two security boys at the house blink when they see the state of her. And him, because he’s also covered in blood.

Flora giggles. “I said I’d steal you more often, not that he couldn’t watch.” John guides her up to her own room, which is around when he contemplates whether it’s a good idea to leave her in a room the color of pooling blood. Flora extracts herself from John looking like she’ll sway in place, but she just grins and pats his arm. “Go shower. Come downstairs and have a drink with me when you’re done, bring us both back down to earth.”

 _And this is where I leave you_ , Caroline hums. _Well done, John_.

“Out of curiosity,” John says, getting an odd look from the security boys going upstairs as he makes his way back to his own room, “why don’t we do this more often?”

Caroline laughs a warm sound he didn’t know her vocal chords could produce. _Because most of the time, you can manage just fine on your own_.

“Pretty sure that’s the closest thing to a compliment you’ve ever given me.”

Caroline snorts. _Take the comm out of your ear before you get in the shower_.

And thus normalcy comes crashing back upon them. “You heading back?”

_I have some assets to unfreeze as a token of gratitude to the Five Families. Tell Flora not to wait up._

“Don’t kill Gianna.”

John hears Caroline’s eye roll through the line and a pointed click of the line going dead. He takes the comm out of his ear and sets it on the nightstand, feeling a bit like he’s taking out his inner ear in the process. It takes the entire shower to stop expecting Caroline to speak up in his head, which makes for an awkward shower, but by the time he shrugs into his clothes and pads down the stairs, his head feels more like his own.

He finds Flora flicking through records in the library, Beatrice setting out a bottle of merlot, Ariadne clearing away some of the guns spread on the coffee table before Flora tells her to leave it and go get some rest. “Hope you’re in the mood for the good shit,” she says, “because we deserve the good shit.”

John elects not to ask whether it’s a good idea to show Flora anything red tonight, figuring Beatrice has seen this show enough to know her likelihood of survival. Instead, he inspects the bottle. Castello di Ama 2001 L’Apparita. “Why do I feel like this is the expense account wine you use to impress people?”

“You say that as though you’re worried it will be wasted on you. Ella or Nina?”

“Ella. And it probably will be.”

Flora gives him a dry look, though her contented smile doesn’t budge. “Consider it an opportunity to broaden your horizons. And like I said, we deserve the good shit. Well,” her smile amps up an octave as she sets the record on low volume, apparently a live concert of some kind, “you do, at least. For saving Gianna’s dumb ass.”

John hears a long-forgotten emcee announce Ella Fitzgerald, saying he’s proud to make it because he can honestly say she’s the real deal before Ella herself thanks the crowd and starts “It All Depends on You”. “I just did my job.”

“And I just had my fun,” Flora returns, pouring the wine and holding out a glass, her smile still in place. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? Having all that power in your head?” He can hear in that sentence that she’s still drunk on the violence, for all that her comfortable clothes and her freshly scrubbed countenance and fluffy curls make her seem more like a human and less like a goddess of war.

John picks up his wine and swirls it, giving it a sniff. It’s herbal, faintly toned with rosemary and sage. Apparently, Flora meant ‘coming back down to earth’ literally. “It takes some getting used to.” He glances up at Flora as stories about her start clicking into place. “Actually, it feels like I’m peering behind the magician’s curtain.”

“How so?”

“Having gone through tonight with the voice of God in my head, I feel like some of the legends about you make a lot more sense.” The fearful ones that explain the rumor that Flora has a high triple-digit body count.

“Legends tend to be banal,” Flora says, failing at coyness when her giggle breaks through, “and don’t ever call Caroline God to her face. She’ll be insufferable.” Her laugh says she might still save it as a compliment for Caroline the next time she does something Flora adores her for. “We don’t actually do this that much. Only, oh…” she squints at the ceiling, counting, “fifteen or so times that come to mind off the top of my head? Most of them in the early days.”

Given Santino’s twelve years in power, that’s not such a high number, and it doesn’t even account for a fifth of the stories about Flora. “Why don’t you?”

“Don’t normally need to.” Flora shrugs. “Caroline has her own job to do. We only do this when we’re worried the chips might not fall in our favor. Besides,” her smile goes feral, “it’s more fun the old fashioned way.”

That brings some of the stories he’s heard about Flora into focus—the ones where Santino was in crisis and she tore through entire armies sent for her brother, seeming to know all the important moves her opponents would make before they did, leaving a field of dead in her wake and Santino with a freshly crippled bird to nurse back to health and codependency in a cage. It still leaves most of the carnage associated with Flora attached to her name alone, and having seen her tonight, really and truly _seen_ her, he understands how that’s possible.

Now, sitting here after hours of violence as Flora finally brings herself back down to earth, he sees what drives all her energy. He thought it was restlessness or boredom or just an overabundance of energy, but it’s not. It’s anger, and even now, when they’ve torn a gory path through the Russians and their work is done, it’s still humming under her skin.

“Why keep up the front?”

“Hm?”

“Why bother with the front at the firm?” He nods to the collection of guns sprawled on the table like a pack of hounds worn out from the chase. “You’re fairly hands-off with them as it is. You could dedicate all your time to your real job instead of pretending.”

“Why do you wear a suit?” Flora replies, swirling her wine as she inspects him with sparkling eyes. “You could just wear body armor and be done with it.” She nods toward the street. “Why bother with the Continentals? Why bother with the rules and the pretension of civility? We all know what we’re here for and what we would do to each other, if the opportunity arose.”

“Without rules we’d just be animals trying to kill each other.”

“Manners maketh man?” she retorts. “We are animals, and we are all trying to kill each other. But we all have our veneers to keep.” She shrugs, lounging her head back into the sofa. “Maybe it’s how I get to know people. Maybe it’s how I remember how to be human. And I like it.”

He studies her, shaking his head to huff a laugh.

“What?”

“You could be at the helm of all this if you wanted to be.”

“I could,” Flora allows. “But I don’t want to be.”

“Why?”

“Volunteering for my hostile takeover?” She bares her teeth and shoves John’s shoulder with a laugh. “Know your talents and follow your interests, and my interests don't run to being a kingpin. I love my brother and I love the harmony of the three of us. The head,” she nods to Caroline’s laptop and splayed notebooks, “the hands,” a nod to her splayed guns on the coffee table, “and the heart,” she nods to the record player, where Ella Fitzgerald is still singing.

John raises an eyebrow. “Santino doesn’t have a heart.” Not beyond the anatomical fact of it.

“It’s an advantage in our line of work,” Flora retorts. “And that’s not quite true. He can have a heart, cognitively speaking. When he chooses to. When he decides it’s important.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” John says softly, quieter and a shade more vulnerable than he intended.

Flora notices, but she doesn’t comment. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because it means he’s decided I’m important.” Her gaze settles again on Caroline’s laptop, flicking back up to John again alight with something else. “Caroline isn’t sure what to make of you.”

“You have a funny way of pronouncing ‘doesn’t like me’.”

Flora snorts. “Caroline’s possessive.” She shrugs. “She takes a while to decide she likes someone.”

“Caroline likes two people. And her cat.”

“Caroline takes a long time to decide someone’s worthy of being around Santino," Flora amends. "But you’ve impressed her lately. She’ll come around sometime before you die, don’t worry.”

He thinks, suddenly, of Helen. Of Flora shoving him in Helen’s direction over and over again."What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You said Caroline takes a long time to decide someone’s worthy of Santino. What about you?”

Flora gives him a small smile, a genuinely warm one. “Oh sweetie, I decided you were worthy of him a long time ago.”

“You’re not bothered?”

“No. Of course not.”

In the background, the song ends and the chatter of a bygone club begins, Ella Fitzgerald answering a song request with a smile audible in her voice. _I don’t know the words to that one, you’ll have to help me out, okay?_ “Why?”

Flora sets down her glass. The focus she had over the last several hours is back, not at all diminished by the absence of a spray of bullets. “How far would you go for him?”

“Far.”

“Would you kill for him?”

“I already kill for him. It’s my job.”

“Not for your job,” Flora says, her focus coming in sharper around the edges. “If someone came for Santino, and you had a choice, I want to know how far you’d go.” The glint of hunger in her eyes is back too, as bright as it was when it lunged for bratva throats. “I want to know when you’d stop.”

He doesn’t even need to think about it. “I wouldn’t.” Because there’s no other choice to be had.

“Would you burn Rome for him?”

“To ash.”

“With everyone in it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you burn me too?” Flora says quietly, a smile curving on her face at the prospect.

“To dust,” John says just as quietly.

Flora grins. “That’s why I’m not bothered.”

“I thought you weren’t happy about it.”

“About you and Santino?”

“No.”

Flora stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “Why the hell would you think that?”

“You were the one who kept pushing me toward Helen. Made a show of it in front of Santino and literally shoved me out of the apartment to get a drink with her.”

Flora stares at him like he’s a goddamn moron. It’s weird not getting that look from Caroline. “I pushed you into getting coffee with Helen because it’s good for Santino to be reminded that he can’t get away with being an Olympic gold medal asshole and relationships are two-way streets. If he’s going to sleep with other people, he’s not allowed to be pissy about you getting a drink with someone, and if he is pissy about it, then he needs to use his fucking words and come to an understanding with you like real fucking adults. Besides, you were moping around like someone shot your puppy. It was pathetic.”

“We’re not,” John falters under Flora’s withering look, “it’s not...”

“Sweetie, Santino has his fun, but he doesn’t get possessive,” Flora says flatly. “And the way he was all up in your business in front of Carmine? The way he was pissed about Helen? And the way you had your panties in a twist about Carmine? Trust me, it is, and you are, and I’m pretty sure you know it, too.”

“Yeah,” John says, because there’s not much else to say.

Flora tops up her wine in victory. She stands and weaves across the room to change the record, returning to the couch with a contemplative look. “Hey, did you get a chance to take a look at your house?”

So that’s what he was forgetting. And now that he’s been reminded, it’s like a lead weight on his shoulders. “No. Lost track of the time.”

“Well,” Flora raises her glass to Gianna’s phone on the counter, “we have been busy.”

Except John’s no more prepared now than he was when they arrived, and now that they have to babysit Gianna’s ring on top of refereeing the Five Families, the thought of having time to visit his house and meet with a realtor is laughable. Worse, the thought of setting foot in his house riles something skittish, something that doesn’t want to find out if it would feel like slipping into an ill-fitting old coat or like slipping back into the place where he belongs.

She studies him for a moment, then seems to come to a decision. “You know I have people here.” She wags her phone in the air. “I can have someone take care of the house. Clean it up, get it on the market. If you want.”

John thought he would recoil but is surprised he can breathe easy again. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Flora holds out a hand. “Keys. I’ll get someone out there and get it listed.”

He goes hunting for them upstairs and returns to set them in her hand. It should feel momentous, but it doesn’t. It just feels like something he should have done months ago.

Flora smiles when he drops the keys into her open palm, standing on her tiptoes to peck his cheek and tug him back to the couch. “We’ll deposit the sale in your bank account when it’s done.” She’s clearly pleased, though he’s not sure about what. Maybe just the sign that John doesn’t intend to leave an open avenue to come back to New York.

Caroline returns late and emerges the next morning short too many hours of sleep. It doesn’t dim her focus in unfreezing assets from behind an enormous mug of coffee at the island, which Beatrice refills as if checking an IV line. After a few hours, Caroline smiles victorious—Sollozzo coughed up his $17 million, which means she can get busy tracing whose couch he surfaced the spare change from.

They stay in New York for another week cleaning up after Gianna, Caroline and Flora keeping her in the Continental all the while. It’s unclear who it’s meant to stop. But after a week, they fetch Gianna from the Continental, and after Flora and Caroline debate with Santino over the phone, orders are dispersed for John, Caroline, and Gianna fly back to Rome to keep Gianna away from the fray, leaving Flora to finish keeping the peace and rallying the Five Families into a semblance of order for a bit longer. Happily, the Five Families and Sollozzo are not keen to piss Flora off after the incident with the Russians, and Sollozzo himself is much more eager to discuss terms of peaceful coexistence with Sonny (it helps when Flora seizes some of his supply lines and Caroline gives his collar a yank). They get a visit from the Corleone brothers before they leave, wishing them a safe flight overnight. All three Corleone brothers—apparently Michael prevailed on Sonny, because Fredo is freshly arrived from Vegas to thank them for offering their help to his family.

Sebastian and Doria are waiting for them, Sebastain holding Yurei for the two seconds it takes Caroline to step into view. Then Yurei is airborne out of Sebastian’s arms, lands for two strides, and leaps again to land in Caroline’s arms, purring the moment she lands and curling so she can get closer, Caroline cooing to her as soon as she catches her. It’s kind of precious.

“Hello,” Gianna coos to Yurei as soon as she steps out of the car. Out of clawing distance, though, because one does not interrupt Caroline and Yurei greeting each other if one intends to keep one’s face attached to one’s skull. “How _is_ my least favorite demon spawn from hell this morning?”

“Don’t insult my cat,” Caroline says, which loses a bit of effect given that she looks ten times more content than she did when they woke up in the airport.

“That’s not a cat. That’s a fucking shinigami in a cat collar. Who has _the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, yes_ ,” Gianna coos pointedly when Yurei cracks open one gold eye to tell her to fuck right off, because like her mistress, Yurei overwhelmingly prefers the elder D’Antonio siblings and is not shy about expressing such sentiments to Gianna.

John gets Doria, who greets him with a hug as soon as he steps out of the car. John wasn’t aware she knew what those are, and it’s over before he has time to process it, Doria giving his elbow a tug when he glances in the direction of the house. “The boys will take your bags upstairs and Mischa will have breakfast in an hour. Santino’s waiting in the orchard.”

“Well, then,” Gianna says brightly, stepping toward the house. “Sounds like Santino’s busy, so we’ll save sibling bonding for when he’s less busy.”

Caroline catches her by the collar. “Oh no you don’t.” John’s impressed she could shift her grip on Yurei to catch Gianna’s collar that fast. By the glower Yurei fixes on Gianna, she is neither impressed nor amused.

“You really want to watch Santino be disgusting with his boyfriend after two weeks away?”

“No,” Caroline says, her face communicating everything she thinks about that prospect. “But Santino wanted to see you as soon as you got in. Quote, ‘as soon as you set foot out of the car’.”

Had Gianna known that, she might have stayed in the car out of spite. Which is probably why Caroline waited until she was a few feet clear of the car to mention it. “You know what we’ve said about being a doormat, right?”

Caroline’s face says if Gianna implies that again, she’s going to turn Gianna into a literal doormat. It’s early enough in the day that Sebastian probably hasn’t given Yurei her exercise yet. “You too, Cassian.”

John wonders, idly, how much of a mess Francesco’s going to have to clean out of the orchard. Though it does make more sense why Santino’s meeting them outdoors.

“Glad you’re safe, paperotta,” Doria says to Gianna, gesturing for the four of them to follow her while shooing Gianna’s other three bodyguards to follow the boys into the house. Caroline doesn’t release her hold on Gianna’s collar. It will take longer than three seconds for her to be over the doormat comment, and unfortunately for Gianna, Caroline has an elephant’s memory.

As it turns out, Santino is outside working, on the phone with someone and leaning up against an apple tree. It must not be that important, because he smiles at John as soon as he sees them coming and makes quick work of ending the call. “Well look what the cat dragged in. You miss me while you were in New York all by your lonesome?”

“About as much as you missed me with your shitbird ex in the boondocks,” John retorts. Which is not to say he stops Santino from pulling him in by his shirt.

“Like a missing lung,” Santino replies, and kisses him with enough feeling to make sure John didn’t miss the point when his brain shorted out on that sentence. His brain didn’t short enough not to return the sentiment, though. Or enough to miss Gianna’s pointed gagging. Which is perhaps why Santino drags it out several seconds longer than he needs to before turning a blinding smile on his sister. “Good morning, darling.”

Gianna smiles back at him, Caroline letting go of her collar so she can hug him. It’s deeply disorienting seeing Santino and Gianna together and it throws John out of the calibration he regained by having Santino close. He still can’t figure out what about Gianna’s eyes is so familiar despite the fact that whatever it is is even more striking standing next to Santino. “Morning, brother. Fun vacation with your ex?”

That wins her an eye roll. “Carmine doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”

“Oh screw that asshole. I meant Domenico.”

“Vittoria was delighted for the company.”

Gianna smiles ear to ear as she loosens her grip on her brother. “You better have come back with filthy threesome stories.”

“Work on your technique, darling,” Santino says, patting her arm and stepping back to hug Caroline with one arm, the other scratching Yurei’s ears when she shoves her head into his hand.

“What, you planning on inviting me?”

Santino snorts and cuts her a flat look on his way back to John. “We’re not here to talk about my trip to San Luca.”

“No?” Gianna’s smile and her eerily familiar eyes settle on John. “Sounds like your boyfriend’s favorite subject to me.”

“Nice try.” Santino sinks back to sit against the tree, pulling John to sit down with him. John keeps his contented hum in his head when Santino settles with his back pressed against John’s chest. Mostly because there’s still a realistic possibility Santino will shrug John’s arm from across his chest to murder his sister and John’s not in any mood to make Gianna feel at ease. “We’re here to talk about your little vacation with Flora’s art ring in New York.”

“You told me to have fun.”

“No,” Santino replies, leaning his head back into John’s shoulder. For all his annoyance, John suspects that if he were a cat, he’d be purring. Might even teach Yurei how not to purr like a whisper from beyond the grave. “I told you to have fun getting up to approved misbehavior.”

“Brought your boyfriend back in one piece, didn’t I?”

“Despite your best efforts,” Caroline mutters, not looking up from Yurei. “And a Russian blood feud.”

“Not helpful,” Gianna mutters back. Caroline’s face says she wasn’t intending to help.

“And explosives,” John adds, because he’s not intending to help either. Also, that jibe about the Pelles was uncalled for.

“You had fun.”

“I had fun blowing up the Tarasovs’ warehouse.” He’s not intending to help, but then, he doesn’t want Santino to abandon leaning against him to murder Gianna. Sure enough, Santino turns his head to let out a delighted laugh into John’s neck that says he’s sorry he missed that and will ask Caroline for video evidence later. After making up two weeks of lost time.

“Well then,” Santino’s gaze settles back on Gianna and Caroline with the promise that Gianna isn’t going to like this next part. “Let’s find out how much I disapprove of the misbehavior you got up to, shall we?”

“Or we could just all agree it worked out fine and move on with our lives,” Gianna says brightly.

If looks could kill, Caroline would have bashed her brains in by now. Or just given Yurei a new scratching post.

As predicted, Santino is not amused to learn about the Russians and even less amused to learn Gianna was within ten seconds of getting John blown up. Caroline is not amused when Santino announces Gianna will stay in Rome until things have quieted down with the Five Families and they’re sure no one will come gunning for the D’Antonios, staring at Gianna with eyes as emotive as stone. John thinks of her willingness to let Gianna get shot, of her utter lack of concern that Gianna is Santino’s sister, of Flora saying Caroline is possessive. He can only hope, for Gianna’s sake, that there’s not much trouble for her to get up to in Rome or else Caroline might just shoot her herself and be done with it.

Gianna, for her part, is not amused by the newfound shortness of her leash, which John supposes makes the three of them a matched set. He is surprised that she doesn’t protest it, but he figures out why within three seconds.

“And Cassian?” Santino’s eyes settle on him like frostbite. “We’ll talk later about whether your contract is worth keeping.”

The anger that was lurking and muzzled behind Gianna’s face flares to life. “You can’t cancel his contract.”

“Can’t I?” Santino says mildly, her anger rolling off him like water across oil. “You seem to forget that I’m the one who holds Cassian’s contract, not you. Along with the rest of your security detail.”

“And you’ve never let me forget it,” she snaps. “You’re not canceling Cassian’s contract.”

One brow raises. “Gotten attached, have you?”

“No you asshole. It’ll be a bitch and a half to find someone half as good.” That and the fact that Cassian has been with her since she started college and is, as a consequence, the most devoted to her of the entire staff, but saying so would be a strategic blunder. “Besides, the Met wasn’t his fault.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“As if you haven’t already had Caroline pull all the feeds. She already knows what happened.”

“Of course she does. She even sent me the highlight reel. Excellent viewing, that.”

“Then you know it wasn’t his fault.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“So you’re deciding whether or not you want to be a dick.”

“No, Gianna,” Santino says coolly, “I’m deciding whether or not Cassian’s worth the generous salary I pay him to make sure incidents like this don’t happen. Especially when they’re avoidable.”

“You don’t pay him to be psychic.”

“No, but I do pay him to account for minor details like the fact that he can’t follow you into the bathroom without attracting attention and plan accordingly.”

“It was the _Met_ for fuck’s sake.”

“Then you know why I’m irritated.”

“And you’re deciding whether or not you want to be a dick,” Gianna says flatly.

Santino sighs. “Have it your way, then.”

“That better mean you’re not canceling his contract.”

“No,” Santino says, the cold deadness in his eyes flashing to the surface, a sharp warning for Gianna to check herself unless she really means to piss him off. “It means I’m no longer having this argument until after breakfast and a lot more coffee.” He turns to Caroline, the hints of a smirk forming on his face. “And possibly after restoring a good mood with the fresh $17 million Caroline brought home to play with. Did you find out whose lunch money he borrowed?”

Caroline looks offended at the suggestion that she might not have.

Santino’s face widens into a proper smirk. “That’s my girl.”

Caroline’s answering smile says they’re going to have fun with this. “You want the good news now or later?”

Santino shakes his head, leaning back into John. “After breakfast and coffee. We’ll go through it when we go through numbers for the fund.”

“You mean after you scar us all for life with your boyfriend?” Caroline quips, though she doesn’t look surprised. Or disappointed at the prospect of escaping Santino and John to spend quality time with her beloved vengeful death spirit from hell. “I need to unpack and check on Harold anyway.”

“Do send Harold my best. We’ll be in for breakfast.”

“I think you mean ‘fuck off’.”

“It’s nice to know your Italian fluency is as strong as ever.” Santino fixes a warning glare on Cassian, enough layers of masks removed to leave the deadness behind his eyes laid bare. It’s unclear whether Cassian is brave or stupid for not shrinking away from it like all the other security boys with a survival instinct. “Be at breakfast with the rest of Gianna’s security detail. I’ll send the boys for you if you’re not there of your own accord.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Gianna snaps.

“I know it won’t. Get lost. We’ll be inside for breakfast, Doria.”

Doria is still there, of course, looking quite pleased to see John back where he belongs. Then she turns on her heel and ushers the other three toward the house, not that they need convincing.

Naturally, that’s when Flora calls.

“Hel _lo_ , my favorite brother,” Flora trills, “how _are_ you this fine day?”

“What do you want, Flora?”

“Why do you assume I want something?”

“Because your timing is perfect and you just had Caroline hack my phone to answer itself.”

“And they say there’s no mystery left in our threesome,” Flora quips, her grin audible from across the Atlantic. “But I’m not calling to chat about that.”

“And here I was worried you would make it odd,” Santino says, dry as Death Valley.

“Asshole.” Flora is, of course, not deterred in the slightest. “Is John with you?”

“You already know he is,” Santino replies, glaring death by forest fire at the cameras in the trees.

“Yes, but it’s polite to ask,” Flora says brightly. “So! Since I happened to catch you both at a good moment—”

“By sheer coincidence, of course,” Santino mutters.

“—this seems to me like the perfect opportunity for you to discuss how you’re both possessive shits,” Flora says over him.

“I fail to see how that’s your business.”

“Someone has to get your shit together,” Flora replies, “and luckily for you, I nominated myself as the only person in this quartet with feelings to help you assholes talk about yours. So. John’s not at all happy to see you with your shitbird exes or your one-night stands. You contemplate skinning someone alive when John gets a drink with someone else. And since that particular brand of business isn’t about to die in a hole anytime soon, it sounds to me like it’s high time to use your words to come to an agreement like fucking adults. Because you can’t get away with being an Olympic gold medal asshole and I don’t want John to murder us all in our sleep.”

“Fuck off, Flora,” John says by way of thank you.

“You’re welcome,” she sings back, because they speak the same language.

“ _Fuck off, Flora_ ,” Santino says by way of telling her to fuck off.

“I can and will have Caroline lock you in a supply closet. I’m giving you a chance to preserve your dignity.”

“I’m going to kill you,” John tells her.

“Love you too, sweetie!” Flora cackles. Then she’s gone.

“I’m going to kill her,” John tells Santino.

“Not if I kill her first.”

“Will Caroline actually lock us in a supply closet?”

“Handcuffed,” Santino replies darkly. “And if Caroline is listening I will _throw your laptop into the sea_.” The last bit comes out as a roar in the general direction of the house.

“Noted,” Caroline’s voice says from the phone speaker. Then the phone switches itself off.

“That’s vaguely creepy.” John makes a mental note to never say anything embarrassing in the vicinity of something with an electrical charge.

“Vaguely?” Santino glares at the house, then sighs. “But since she’s still listening through your phone and the cameras, I suppose Flora will be incorrigible until Caroline confirms we actually did what she wanted.”

“I could break my phone,” John offers. “And shoot the cameras.” Granted, they’d have to replace the phone and the cameras and Francesco would be upset if John hurt his trees. Which is not to say that John is avoiding this conversation.

Naturally, it’s not that easy. “Then they’d just be insufferable.” He still tosses both their phones several feet away before settling back against John with a sigh, turning his face into John’s shirt. “Which means we need to use our words, I suppose.”

He says the last sentence in Russian. Other than John and Santino, exactly four people in the house speak Russian, two of whom are already actively listening. It doesn't buy them much privacy, but it buys them privacy until the boys hail the two among them who speak Russian, and so John follows him into Russian with the sensation of ducking into a dark closet despite the warmth of the summer sun. John's not used to speaking Russian in the daylight anymore. “Seems like.”

“So as not to have you murder people I can’t afford to have dead yet.”

“Or have you plotting the murder of innocent civilians.”

Even two weeks later, Santino is still annoyed by that. “I never claimed not to be possessive.”

“I noticed.” John settles his arm back across Santino’s chest and his head back against the tree, so as to feel vaguely rooted and less like he ought to be pretty much anywhere else. “I don’t like the one-night stands.” It comes out quieter than he meant it to, for all that he still wants to shoot the one-night stands at the prospect of it. And not just because the other two-thirds of Santino are eavesdropping.

Santino lets out a long exhale. “I know.” It’s still a shade quieter than he needs to be. “The ones since Paris have all been business. Blackmail and gamesmanship.”

It says something about John’s life that those sentences are reassuring. Even so. “Carmine and your shitbird exes aren’t one-night stands.”

“No.” John’s the one in Santino’s home with Santino up against him without the need to get anything out of it, but even so, that one word rankles. “If I had another way to deal with that kind of business, I would. But I can’t afford to lose them.”

“I know.” It still feels like being stabbed with a fireplace poker. Or wanting to stab someone with a fireplace poker. John tilts his head forward to rest his nose in Santino’s hair to chase that thought out. “Flora thought Carmine was difficult because you threw me in his face. Was she right?”

Santino’s sigh says he’s still annoyed with Carmine for showing up at his doorstep at all. “Yes.” He burrows his face further, like he can ward Carmine off through closeness. “I was pissed off that we might have to do the same damn song and dance when I could have been appreciating having you back. I was hoping he’d catch a clue and fuck off.”

“But you knew there was a strong possibility that flavor of business was on the table.”

“Yes.”

While it is reassuring to know that Santino was an asshole in the interest of having John instead of having the same old bullshit with Carmine, Carmine hasn’t fucked off in twenty-three years and is unlikely to start now. “I can deal with the one-night stands as long as I know they’re temporary, but that kind of business isn’t temporary. So just deal with it the fast way. No dragging it out for a week like Carmine did. I’ll go somewhere else so you can make quick work of it.”

Santino scoffs. “I’m not exiling you every time Carmine gets a bright idea.”

“If it removes the temptation to be an Olympic gold medal asshole, I’d rather exile myself and get it over with.” He knows as soon as he feels Santino smirk that what comes next may or may not be a good idea. “What?”

“You could join.”

“You don’t share any better than I do,” John says flatly.

Santino sits up just enough for John to see him smile with all his teeth. “Who said anything about sharing? Because I had in mind something more along the lines of actually fucking you with the fringe benefit of fucking with my shitbird ex’s head. At worse, the chance to experiment in fucking each other vis-a-vis a third party with the fringe benefit of fucking with their head.” He shrugs at John’s dry look. “It wouldn’t work for all of them, but it would at least make some of them less painfully tiresome.”

Somewhere in Manhattan, John thinks, Flora is laughing her ass off. Even so, it’s…not as awful a suggestion as expected. “I’ll think about it.” He tugs Santino to lie back against him, soothed by the contented sigh Santino lets out when he gets there. “But I’d still rather deal with them the fast way. And that doesn’t answer the one-night stands.”

Santino’s smirk creeps back. “Well I’m certainly not opposed to creativity on that front.”

John gives his hair a light tug, just enough to tell him to stop being a shit. “Given the choice, I’d rather not have them there at all.”

“I know.” Santino exhales again, leaning into the hand in his hair like the cat he is. “I can’t predict when those will show up, and I can’t always afford to let the opportunity for leverage pass.”

John hears what he’s not saying, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t sting. Those opportunities for leverage are precious because of what people do and do not know. Santino doesn’t give any indication of his preferences, not in public. Which means that despite the fact that Santino isn’t actually closeted, most people in their world don’t know he’s gay, usually for one of three reasons: it never occurs to them to look, it occurs to them to look but they discard the thought as absurd in a man of Santino’s standing, or they privately wonder about stray whispers without ever seeking confirmation for fear of Flora and Caroline’s wrath. It helps that the few who are high enough up the food chain to know Santino is gay never breathe a word of it and quietly shut down any such rumors for fear of Flora and Caroline’s wrath. Those who know he’s gay without knowing anything else consider it a forgivable sin because they think Santino doesn’t act on it, while those who know he’s gay and acts on it consider it a forgivable sin because they never hear of him acting on it, and in any case, both sides keep their mouths shut because they know he owns their descendants. The mob-affiliated men who have one-night stands with him are rare birds stumbling between what the top of the food chain knows and what everyone else does not. They sleep with him because they think he’s keeping a secret, and and in doing so give Santino an opportunity to cultivate their dirty little secrets as leverage.

All of which is held together by one strategic misunderstanding: they all think Santino is a bachelor, because the small handful of people who know better and might have a reason to say something about it (Carmine, for instance) can’t say anything without giving themselves away. Without giving everything up. 

It stings, but John’s a pragmatist, not a romantic. “I know you can’t and I know I can’t ask you to. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”

“I limited the ones since Paris to strategic ones, but…” one shoulder rises and drops. “I can’t get rid of all of them.”

The one-night stands are considerably less irritating than the shitbird exes, and marginally improved for the fact of knowing they’re business just as much as the rest. Which doesn’t change the fact that John wants to kill them, but still. “I can tolerate the one-offs knowing that they’re one-offs, but I don’t want to be surprised by them.”

“I’ll give you a veto where I can help it. Otherwise I’ll give you warning.”

It’s not as good as getting rid of them, but given that getting rid of them is impossible, it’s considerably better than he had before. “I can work with that.”

Santino falls silent for a moment, with a flavor that says he’s trying to discern how to not be an asshole relative to his strong desire to be an asshole. So John’s not at all surprised when he asks, “And Helen?” in a clipped tone.

He gives Santino’s hair another light tug. “What about her?” He knows exactly what about Helen, but there are moments when it pays to make Santino elaborate.

He can feel Santino parsing his words over like a mouthful of lemon. “According to Flora, if I’m free to spend my time with other people, then you should be able to do the same, regardless of whether or not my other people are all business.”

Apparently, Flora really did shout black magic at him in her dining room. “Is that what she was shouting at you in French?”

“Strung between inventive curses.” Santino sits up to look at him again, and the mixed look of irritated possessiveness and resignation is oddly hilarious. Particularly because his hair is sticking up where John had his fingers in it. John’s tempted to go get his phone and photograph it as a thank-you note to Flora. “Do you want to spend your time with other people?”

John can’t help the snort that escapes him. Santino glares. “Not especially.”

“And yet, texting Helen.”

“Because it’s not at all weird or possessive that you know that,” John replies, dry as desert rocks in the sun.

“I never claimed not to be.”

“As a black hole.” John rolls his eyes and tugs Santino back into him. “Like I said, I’m not interested in spending time with other people. She’s fun, but she’s not you. I’ll let you know if my stance changes.”

The pleased sigh Santino lets out when he curls into him soothes something that’s been twitchy since Carmine. “Think that’s enough to appease Flora?”

John casts a dead-eyed look at the camera and makes sure his voice is loud enough to carry to their phones. “I’m not about to murder anyone in their sleep, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Santino burrows into him like the cat he is, apparently content. “Good enough for me.”

Still, there is one other thing he’s been meaning to mention to Santino. “By the way, your best friend and your cousin are terrifying.”

Santino laughs. “I heard you met Flora after Gianna got kidnapped. And that Caroline and her baby got to have some fun with the pair of you. I wish I could have seen it.”

John thinks of Caroline speaking to them like the voice of God, the invisible hand pulling their strings with her baby apparently watching over. Thinks of Flora tearing a path of destruction alongside him like the wrath of an old and inhuman God before settling in with a drink. Thinks of how neither of them were afraid when they saw his handiwork up close and personal. When he let them see what he can actually do. “Flora said she wanted to steal me more often. And that you could watch.”

Santino laughs harder. “In that case, I may even let her.”

John's even looking forward to it. He doesn't realize why he's off balance until they go to breakfast—he and Santino have never spoken Russian to each other before, and switching back to Italian when they step into the kitchen doesn't feel like switching into English with Viggo used to. Viggo preferred to speak Russian whenever he could get away with it, so it felt like carrying on business. Switching out of Russian with Santino feels like it's their own secret. 

In the end, Santino doesn’t cancel Cassian’s ward contract, in part because the Met wasn’t actually Cassian’s fault but mostly because it would be a bitch and a half to find a guardian half as good. He does… _cancel_ the contracts of Gianna’s other three bodyguards, though, and makes sure Gianna and Cassian are there to see it. Yurei stares at her own reflection in the blood for a moment before Caroline snatches her clear of the fray. Then Santino replaces the canceled bodyguards with three Israeli siblings who have been part of Flora’s dedicated security detail for the last eight years, cousins of Mikkel’s named Tali, Ari, and Ziva. They’ve kept up with Flora for so long because Ari’s as insane as Flora and his sisters are as capable as Mikkel and also because they’re loyal to Flora as if she’s their beloved cousin too. In translation: Gianna’s new security detail puts up with none of Gianna’s bullshit. Plus, Tali and Ziva come with the fringe benefit of being able to follow Gianna into a bathroom without attracting attention.

Gianna is not happy about it, but then, Santino just canceled her other three ward contracts in front of her. Arguing will only end in Cassian being canceled too.

Flora returns a few days later with Santino’s interests preserved. The Five Families are fractious but not about to break the Covenant, a secret meeting has been brokered between Sollozzo and Sonny to negotiate the terms of peaceful future dealings, the financier is firmly in Tara and Dr. Wren’s capable hands, and the care and feeding of New York is once more returned to the local affiliates.

Happily, Flora doesn’t give John shit about using his words like a real fucking person, though her smile says she’s thinking it. She does pull him into a hug, though, and holds on until he unclenches and hugs her back. Flora’s showing John and Santino pictures of the wheat-paste Madonna she commissioned to live permanently on the wall of the townhouse living room when she gets a call from Vito.

Sonny Corleone is dead, sold out en route meeting with Sollozzo and shot fifty-six times.

Carmela won’t stop sobbing.


	10. swallow the sound that swallows me whole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is action, reaction, and consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy escape from 2020 kids. Have a chapter to commemorate survival of that total dumpster fire. It's a comparatively short one (for this fic anyway) but don't you worry none, the next one's long. Sorry not sorry (just kidding I'm sorry for everything).

Michael organizes a meeting and murders Sollozzo in retaliation the following day, along with Sollozzo’s pet bodyguard, a corrupt NYPD captain by the name of McCluskey, despite Caroline telling him that they need to know who sold Sonny out. _That_ takes Caroline and Flora hours to unfuck over the phone with the police commissioner and Santino hours more on the phone with Vincenzo and Vito. Michael did not surface who sold Sonny out. Sollozzo wasn’t that flavor of stupid.

Caroline is sorely tempted to murder Michael out of spite.

She doesn’t, because she needs to unravel what sorry fucker sold Sonny out and coordinate Dr. Wren to seize the headless remains of Sollozzo’s business, but she’s sorely tempted. Instead, at Vito’s behest, Flora smuggles Michael to safe harbor in Palermo in the care of Silvio and Benedetta while Fredo passes through Flora’s network back to safe harbor in Vegas. Vincenzo only agrees to the former because it leaves Michael under his thumb in Palermo. By proxy of his handlers, anyway, because the hours on the phone also result in a secondary agreement for Vincenzo to immediately fly out to New York and call a Commission meeting of the Five Families to unfuck this.

It is, in summary, a clusterfuck.

The only good news is that Vito is well enough to step back into the role of Don Corleone, which means they have a voice of reason and cold calculation at the helm to match Vincenzo’s marching orders. From what John overheard, Vito made it clear his loyalty remains with Santino as it always has and spent most of the call reassuring Vincenzo about the plan just as much as Santino. So John would guess by tone, given that he doesn’t speak a lick of Sicilian.

Either way, it’s enough to get Vincenzo on board with the plan and on board a plane to New York to execute his role in whatever said plan is, which leaves Santino free to deal with business that was temporarily set on a back burner in Rome.

The Colombians, for example.

“Helen again.” Flora murmurs, when John’s phone buzzes. 

“Not the moment.” They’re sixty seconds from pulling up to a warehouse meeting with the Colombians. Also, Santino is in the back seat next to Flora.

“Did you tell her you’re back?”

“Been a bit busy. Still not the moment.” Which isn’t strictly true. He has had time to answer Helen sporadically. He just hasn’t gotten around to telling her they got back to Rome sooner than expected.

Flora gives him a look while checking her gun magazine. “I meant what I said about not judging you. But I will judge you for being a dick to a woman who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Noted.”

He means to put his phone away. Then it rings. John pulls it out to silence it only to find it’s not Helen at all—Caroline is calling him. Caroline never calls him. So he picks up, eyeing the warehouse as it comes into view. “Not a good time, Caroline.”

“Aguirre is angry. He’s going to pull something.” Caroline’s tone is the same measured calm that doesn’t match her brusqueness, her words lilting in the wrong places as if she’s talking too fast to remember how to stress her words correctly in Italian. “Protect Santino.”

“Caroline, what—?”

The phone clicks dead.

He lowers the phone from his ear to find his phone wasn’t buzzing with Helen’s texts at all. They were all Caroline—warnings about Aguirre being angry with Santino, trying to get his attention, and when that didn’t work, she lost patience and called him.

Sameen frowns between the phone and the warehouse as they pull up. “I thought Caroline was in meetings all morning?”

“Can you two focus, please?” Santino snaps. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re about to have company.”

“And miss getting you charming in time to scare the Colombians shitless? Not a chance in hell.” Flora shoves the magazine back into place and holsters it under her suit jacket. John slips his phone in his pocket to avoid encouraging her further.

Sure enough, Santino’s charm switches on strong enough to take someone’s head off the moment he steps out of the car and strides with Flora to meet the Colombians. “Mr. Aguirre. Welcome back to Rome.”

“Signor D’Antonio. Signora Rosalia.” Aguirre doesn’t look as pleased to see Santino and Flora as they do to see him, but then, he’s not trying that hard.

Also, John’s standing over Santino’s shoulder, and John has Caroline’s voice playing over in his head. Caroline is in meetings all morning and wouldn’t have had time to look at Aguirre. But her security would have alerted them if she was missing, and in any case, all her meetings are in the fund’s fortress of an office downtown and a system breach would have immediately alerted Santino and Flora. Caroline shouldn’t have time to call him, but she did, and her voice was odd when she called him, though John can’t figure out why. That’s a problem he can’t solve right now. He can, however, do what Caroline told him to do, which is watch Aguirre and protect Santino.

“What’s the matter, Emmanuel?” Flora says brightly. “You told Julius you wanted a meeting.”

Aguirre’s gaze flicks to the wall of bodyguards around them, finding one of Flora’s chemists among them. Then to John again. “You usually send Dr. Calvino on these errands. I’m surprised.”

Flora grins. “Occasionally it pays to tend to your own housekeeping. So let’s chat about that present your boys have for me.”

“Not yet.”

“No?”

“No.” Aguirre turns to Santino. “I think we should have a conversation first.”

“I don’t know what fresh bullshit you pull with your coke shipments to other customers, and to be honest, I don’t care.” Flora’s eyes harden. “We’re not talking about a coke shipment, we’re talking about shipping delays to the Continentale. This is the fucking High Table. You do not fuck with Continentale shipments.” Which is why Flora’s already pissed.

Aguirre stares at Santino, who shrugs. “Show the woman what she ordered and you might find me agreeable. Or we can all go home and take shipments from dealers who appreciate timeliness as a virtue.”

Aguirre nods to his men, one of whom steps forward to the no man’s land between them and sets a duffel bag on the floor.

Flora is not impressed. “Awful small bag, Emmanuel.” She strides up to it and weighs it in one hand. “Awful light, too.”

“It’s good stock.” Aguirre tilts his head to Dr. Calvino, surrounded by Flora’s men. “He can verify that for you.”

“I’m sure he can.” Flora snaps her fingers and Calvino springs forward, opening his briefcase and the duffel bag—full of raw materials for the Continentale chemists to turn into any number of drug cocktails for their peculiar clientele but well short of Flora’s full order. Flora orders him what to check and fixes her stare on Aguirre. “Doesn’t change the fact that you’re short. So you’d better have at least ten more bags in your trunk, Emmanuel, or I’m about to get annoyed.”

“I might,” Aguirre replies, not looking as concerned by Flora’s annoyance as he ought to be if he likes the current arrangement of his teeth. “I might even be inclined to give them to you.”

“Might be inclined,” Flora repeats incredulously to Santino, narrowing her eyes at Aguirre. “I don’t care if you’re inclined to become a nun. You’ve been shorting Julius. I don’t know how you boys do things south of the equator, but hereabouts it’s traditional to hand over stock that’s been paid in full. And if you want to play with the big dogs, you play by the fucking rules.”

Aguirre shrugs. “I needed to get your attention. Signor D’Antonio’s, at least.”

“You wanted my attention, Mr. Aguirre.” Santino gestures carelessly to the warehouse. “Now you have it.” Sadly for him, he decided to get Santino’s attention while the Five Families are feeling their oats, which is why his tone translates to _careful what you wish for_. “So tell me what you want.”

“My money.”

“Ah, new investor anxiety. How I missed thee.” Santino shares a glance with Flora, who rolls her eyes hard enough to see her brain. “I told you I’m a man of my word.” Granted, people should do a better job reading the fine print of Santino’s word, but that’s neither here nor there.

“And look where your word’s gotten me.”

“You wanted your money cleaned, Mr. Aguirre, and you wanted introductions with our connections. Both of which I’ve delivered beautifully.”

“You delivered introductions. Not my returns.”

“And as I told your associate, we’re on schedule with cleaning. I delivered the first disbursement as promised.”

“Not fast enough.”

“It takes an awful lot of soap to scrub that many millions clean enough to buy a Pope.” Santino shrugs as if that many millions are a casual affair for him, which they are. “And effort to dance that many millions through the global market with interest on the exchange rates. Dr. Turing sleeps like the dead, you know.”

“You’re supposedly the best, Signor D’Antonio. And yet here I stand without my returns.”

“I am the best, Mr. Aguirre, which is why you came to Dr. Turing and I and did your little goat and pony show to convince us you were worth our trouble. You’ve already had a taste of the growth we can give you in the first disbursement. Now you’re just being greedy.”

“I could go to someone else. You’re hardly the only launderer on the market.”

“You could,” Santino allows, “if you can call that amateurish handjob laundering. And if you want the authorities sniffing around your cartel again because the stench of your money drew them in like flies, which we both know you can’t afford while you clean up your mess in Venezuela.”

“And if you want my stock, I need my money to clean up in Venezuela.”

“No, you want your money to clean up in Venezuela so you have extra liquidity for expansion.” Santino raises an eyebrow in challenge. “Unless you’re saying you can’t deliver what you promised. In which case we will be happy to relieve you of your duties as a High Table supplier so you have free time to get your house in order.”

Aguirre glances to John at last. “Is that what you brought Baba Yaga for?”

Flora grins something feral. “That and his sterling sense of humor.”

“I don’t keep Mr. Wick busy swatting fleas, Mr. Aguirre,” Santino says. “Unless the fleas prove particularly tiresome.”

Aguirre’s hum and his smirk say he’s not as worried about the current arrangement of his teeth as he should be. As sure a sign as any of new investor arrogance. “I heard about Mr. Wick and Signora Rosalia’s little work trip to New York. Seems you’re having trouble keeping your house in order with your Sicilian affiliates.”

John sees just enough of Santino’s face out of the corner of his eye to see the same deadness slip to the surface as Santino slips a hand in his suit jacket’s inner pocket. “Then you heard what happened to Mr. Wick’s former employer when he saw fit to annoy me.” His smile is an unsettling mockery of the expression as he produces a pencil from his suit jacket and holds it out to John. “And the one from seven years ago about one night, three men, a bar, and a pencil.”

John gives Santino a look meaning _did you put a pencil in your pocket just so you could say that?_ Then takes the pencil and throws it clean through the eye of Aguirre’s affiliate whose hand was twitching toward his gun, John’s own gun leveling with Aguirre’s forehead before the rest of his affiliates have time to process what happened.

Flora bounces on her toes with a gleeful cackle. “Errands are _so much less boring_ with you around.”

“It’s good stock, boss,” Calvino calls, skidding back to the bodyguards in the interest of not getting shot.

“Seems you’re not as stupid as you pretend to be, Mr. Aguirre,” Santino says as Flora scoops up the bag. “You have two days to hand over the rest of the shipment and the back stock you owe Julius. And since you’ve been playing hard and fast with translating payment into the agreed-upon goods, we’ll be taking this shipment off your hands for free. Cough up what you owe and we’ll deliver your next disbursement on schedule. Show me you’re worth keeping as a supplier and Dr. Turing may even be convinced to bankroll your house cleaning in Venezuela as a token reminder of how strategic investment can pay off.” He straightens his jacket and checks his watch as though Aguirre bores him, which he does. “Well, it seems we have other meetings to attend.”

John keeps his eyes fixed on Aguirre as Santino and Flora walk away, walking backward with the rest of the security team to make sure the Colombians don’t get bright ideas. Aguirre meets his eye, perhaps in the hope of seeing it before John pulls the trigger, his anger flying at them like throwing stones.

“I’m a man of my word, Mr. Aguirre,” Santino calls, pulling open the passenger side of the car door. “As long as you play by my rules.”

John’s phone rings as he approaches the car. Caroline again with the same oddly lilting voice as before. “Drive the car. Watch the streets. Aguirre wants to hit you before you get back to safety.”

She’s gone before he can ask her what the hell’s going on. So John shoos Sameen away from the driver’s seat, and he doesn’t turn his gaze away from Aguirre until they’re in the car and safely pulled away from the warehouse.

“Well that was fun,” Flora hums from the backseat. John scans every street they pass, tasting Aguirre’s anger on his tongue and Caroline’s warning on loop in his ears.

“You think he’ll pay up?” Sameen asks, though she still looks like she’s reveling in the fun. Astrid and Mikkel are still laughing, signing commentary with Ares.

“If he knows what’s good for his health,” Santino replies.

“And he’s not fond of number two pencils,” Flora adds, earning a fresh wave of snickering.

“Relax.” Santino nudges John’s shoulder when he stops gloating long enough to see John scanning the street. “They’re not going to spring out from behind a mailbox.”

They roll to a stop at a light, which leaves John free to turn and look at Santino pretending to be unamused. “Did you put a pencil in your pocket just so you could make that reference?’

Santino’s smirk says he absolutely did. “You had fun.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

Santino’s smirk earns him still more snickering from the peanut gallery. “You love it.”

“Incorrigible,” John reminds him, though his eyes on Santino are unmistakably fond.

He has just enough time to process Flora scream “ _John!_ ” And then a car slams into the driver’s side and whirls them a full ninety degrees, John’s heart freezing in his chest between beats in the split second of motion.

Then the gunfire starts.

John hears himself snarl _shit_ like someone else said it, firing and killing the Colombians in the front of the car. There are more of them pulling up, though, and he shoves Santino out of the passenger side while firing, Sameen and Mikkel diving in front of Flora.

 _You alright?_ Ares signs, dropping out of the car after Flora as John slides backward out of the passenger side behind Santino.

“Fine.”

“Get them to the Continentale!” Sameen roars from the car, grabbing a semiautomatic from under the seat to fire through the windows.

“Get us cover,” he snarls at the boys. Mikkel sprays bullets at the Colombians while John takes Flora and Santino and sprints for the other car, Ares on their tail and firing to cover their backs. Aristide pitches a grenade at the Colombians as Mikkel and Sameen dive away from the car. Ares and Astrid leap into the car after Santino and Flora, shooting out the windows as Flora punches numbers into her phone and shouts orders for backup.

They’ve barely made it two blocks when the car radio switches on without anyone touching it. _What the hell’s going on?_ _Are you alright?_ It’s Caroline, and her voice isn’t oddly lilting anymore.

“We’re fine,” Flora calls from the backseat.

_A message in the middle of a meeting saying the Colombians hit you with a car is not fine._

“Are you alright?” John spares just enough focus to talk between scanning streets and driving.

_I’m fine._

“You sounded strange when you called me.”

 _I didn’t call you_.

She’s not giving any of her codes to say she’s in trouble, and when Santino speaks up from the back, he doesn’t sound worried. “Where are you?”

 _In the office_.

“Stay there until we call you. Go back to the meetings and don’t let them think anything is wrong.”

By Caroline’s sigh, she does not want to go back to the meetings. _You’re going to the Continentale_?

“Yes.”

 _I’ll be watching_. _Call me when you’re done._ Then the radio clicks off again and Caroline is gone.

John makes it to the Continentale in record time, his lungs still raw from where his breath seized in his chest. But stronger still is the sensation pouring through his veins like someone replaced his blood with lava, his mind narrowing to a fine point of rage that only allows enough room for checking the streets to make sure nothing slows him down and calling up Aguirre’s local operations in his mind, locations, entrances and exits, strategic points and blind spots. How many men to kill. How many guns he’ll need. He barely throws the gear shift into park before prowling around the car to close around Santino with Astrid and Ares. They make it through the door and Astrid beelines for Charon at the concierge desk. Eyes turn toward their guns and immediately skirt away when they land on John as if they’ll drop dead just from looking at him. The roaring monster in his chest says they just might.

 _Secure him in a room_ , he signs to Ares.

“You going to burn Rome?” Flora says. When he looks down at her, Flora’s veneer is gone, leaving only the concussive force of her rage on full blast. With John standing next to her, it’s no wonder the room is airless.

“The Colombian parts.”

Flora’s smile is vicious. “Then let’s get gasoline.”

He hears Santino’s laugh next to him, looking up to see him with his masks off, studying John as if mesmerized. Even in the Continentale, John can still feel his heart like a clenched fist, the aftershocks of the collision in his muscles. So he herds Santino to the elevators, grateful there isn’t anyone waiting he might have to kill. Santino’s hand catches the elevator door, though, and finding no one watching, drags John half into the elevator by his suit lapels, John gripping the edges of the door as Santino kisses him.

“Give them hell,” Santino says, looking at John with his masks gone and his face bare and a smile arching across his face like he’s seeing John for the first time. “And don’t get shot.”

John doesn’t let himself reach for Santino, because beyond registering that Santino is safe his mind can only think of killing and his hands only want to reach for weapons. So he nods and steps back, turning to stride with Flora.

The lobby clears when the patrons see them coming.

He surfaces with Flora hours later leaving a path of dead bodies in their wake, thrumming with the heat of something wide awake under his skin that wants to tear through everything in his path, something that wouldn’t be satisfied even after he left no one alive.

And when he realizes it, the breath seizes in his lungs and he stops dead in his tracks.

“John?” Flora calls, turning to look up at him. “You alright?”

He takes a beat too long to answer, forcing the heat flooding in his veins to flow back to its source, to dry up and frost over, to leave his mind a still pool in its wake. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Flora doesn’t look convinced, but she goes with him to the car anyway, texting Ares and Sameen to confirm that they’ve brought Santino back to the house in the intervening hours when it became clear Aguirre would no longer be a problem. She calls Caroline en route to the house to confirm in her own words that they’re done.

John can feel Flora looking at him in the car on the drive back to the house. He’s too quiet, he knows. Too still. But he needs his focus marshaled, his mind steady, the cage in his chest firmly locked and wrapped with chains. So he focuses on driving, on obeying every traffic law and noticing every detail until his head is completely silent. It still takes him a minute to get out of the car, takes his concentration to muster a smile at Flora as they go inside, reminding himself that he’s locked it away now, that a smile is something he can afford, that it’s safe now, even though the aftershocks in his head say that might not be true.

They hear Goldberg Variations coming from the harpsichord as they step into the house. Flora gently pushes on his arm. “See? He’s fine. You did good. Go see him.”

John walks slowly down the hall to the gallery, measuring his footsteps as he goes. He feels something unwind in him, standing there watching and hearing Santino play, pausing between variations to scribble in a notebook balanced on the bench. Goldberg Variations are his favorite thing to watch Santino play because he uses them when he needs to think—they're familiar enough to sink into without pause but technically involved enough to require constant attention, ideal for pushing Santino’s mind into motion.

He looks up to see John at the door, smiling as he does even as he turns his attention back down to the notebook to write before he forgets his thought. “There you are.”

John stills, expecting a surge of heat again at the memory. But it doesn’t come. So he steps into the room, hovering near Santino as he scribbles numbers, basking in the quiet in the aftermath of music.

“Give me a minute.” Santino glances up again, smiling. “You and Flora were busy.”

“Yeah.” And there’s the stirring of something brutal in his bones, pricking alive and awake when taunted with the scent of blood and bone. His stops his hand in the air and he draws it back as if burned for fear that his hands will slip into destruction as they have for the last several hours, even though he feels none of the breathless, relentless heat in them now.

Santino looks up again to find John just out of reach. “Everything alright?”

He wants to stay here in his chair, wants to listen to Santino playing Goldberg Variations, wants to feel his mind still and settle in the space between the notes. He wants to step behind the bench and angle Santino's head up to kiss him, wants to be the reason Santino's music cuts short so his clever hands can set to some other music, wants Santino's clever hands to settle him back into being home. Except his lungs are still aching from the moment his breath seized in them, the moment he woke up in the midst of the dead to realize there was nothing in his head except a furious chant of _more more more_ and a dangerous focus to answer it.

And he can still feel the moment his heart froze in his chest, the moment the car crashed into them while his eyes were on Santino.

Santino raises his eyebrows. “John?”

He almost reaches for Santino. Almost. Instead, he drops his hand, shakes his head, and smiles. "It’s nothing."

He doesn't kiss Santino. Instead, he steps out of the room, ignoring the worsening itch in his chest and the angry vibration between his ears, even as the thing in his chest remains caged and asleep. Reminds himself it needs to stay that way. So he goes up to his own room and calls Helen while tracing the paint lines in the goldfinch.

He wonders, as she picks up the phone, how the bird found itself in that position. Its talons wrapped around a metal perch, its wings folded, frozen forever in paint without the promise of flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't really think it was going to be that easy, did you? 
> 
> And if you're wondering when the frick we're going to get to the actual premise of this bloody thing, I remind you to have patience. Patience is a virtue. I promise it will be rewarded with interest. We play for the slowest of burns with a worthwhile finish up in here. 
> 
> Also, the next chapter is...well. Oh honey. Sorry not sorry (just kidding I'm sorry for everything).


	11. i'm almost me again, she’s almost you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John needs to be safe. And so he stays away. Problem is, he can't bring himself to leave, he doesn't know how to be safe, and Santino doesn't have enough sense to be afraid of him. Meanwhile, Gianna is finally home. It's unclear if that's to anyone's benefit, even hers. 
> 
> In which there are many frightening reminders that despite all appearances, everyone here is all too human. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for trauma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't the hardest in the whole fic (I'll give you all the content warnings for that) but it is one of the hardest. John's not in a fantastic place here and there's a lot of trauma on display, so do me a favor and read with care, yeah? 
> 
> I don’t think John is the avoidant type per se, in that this isn’t coming from fear. It’s coming from a place of trying to defuse a situation before it happens, and to do that you remove the most dangerous thing in the room. Problem is that John knows he’s the most dangerous thing in the room, and he doesn’t want to be a danger to the people he cares about, so he removes himself from a situation where he could get angry and therefore become extremely dangerous to the people he cares about. I’ve seen one version in fic where he went running anytime he knew he was getting angry and wouldn’t come back until he was calm. Same idea, except a bit more complex, and also, John has shite communication skills. 
> 
> There's also quite a lot happening in this chapter. You get a shit-ton of backstory and a lot of it is central to the main thread, so pay attention. 
> 
> This is the most you see of Helen in the entire fic. Remember, she's here for a fun time, not a long time (though I might have been too quick in applying the word "fun"). Helen's here to serve a purpose. Now you get to find out what it is. 
> 
> Also, Doria is the real MVP. Just saying.

Three days after the incident with the Colombians, Santino stops playing piano in the middle of a song and turns to face John on the piano bench. “Everything alright?”

John steels himself and draws on his well of calm. He knew this was coming, but it’s still going to hurt. “Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Santino looks to the distance between them, John at the far end of the room. “You’re avoiding me.”

“Haven’t gone anywhere.” Even though it feels like he’s at the far end of the world.

“You’re distant.”

“I’m sitting right here.” Even though it feels like sitting at the bottom of the ocean as soon as he says it.

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” He does, and he wants desperately to remedy it. But he can’t, and he doesn’t, and Santino frowns at him. “You haven’t come within four feet of me in days.”

“Figured you didn’t appreciate me being clingy.”

“ _Clingy_?” Santino stares at him in utter confusion. “Are you upset about something?”

“No.”

“Clearly you’re upset about something.”

“I’m not upset about anything.”

“John.” Santino stands from the piano bench and picks his way carefully to John, resting a hand on his face. “You won’t even look at me.”

“Please don’t,” John exhales, staring at a fixed point on the floor. Because if he looks at Santino, he’s going to kiss him, and he can’t do that. After a moment, Santino’s hand withdraws and he takes a few steps back to perch in a chair, balancing his arms on his knees to study John. After a moment, John looks up and meets Santino’s eye and immediately wishes he didn’t, because all he wants is to fix this and kiss Santino, and kissing Santino is the worst possible way to fix this.

“Did something happen with the Colombians?”

Immediately he hears the crash of metal, feels the bottomless surge of violence, and heaves both away. “Nothing happened with the Colombians.”

“Did something else happen that you’re not telling me about?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Are you angry about something?”

John feels the pull of muscle memory, of tearing through the Colombians, and shoves it back in its cage where it belongs. “If I was angry, you wouldn’t need to ask me that question.”

“Have I done something?”

“You didn’t do anything,” John says, quiet and insistent, because he needs Santino to know that part is true.

Santino draws a breath, lets it go. “Are you upset about the agreement?”

“I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I was upset about it.”

“Are you reconsidering it?”

“No. I’m fine with our agreement.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I told you I’m fine.”

“Then help me understand,” Santino snaps, his voice picking up volume. “Because clearly something is wrong.”

He can’t explain himself, though, because Santino will try to convince him otherwise, that everything will be fine and he’ll be safe, and John desperately wants to be convinced, and he can’t let that happen, because he knows it's not true. “I told you. Nothing is wrong.” He closes his book and stands from the couch, making his way out of the gallery, because he’s a terrible liar and he doesn’t want to lie to Santino about this and he needs to leave before he stops lying to Santino about this. So he leaves.

After a week of John refusing to explain himself, Santino is irritated.

And when he finds out about Helen, Santino is _pissed_.

“ _Helen_?” he snarls, storming into the library. “Are you fucking _kidding me_?”

As an unrelated aside, John’s going to strangle Caroline. “Pretty sure that’s none of your business.”

“Go to hell.” Santino drops onto the chair across from John, radiating fury. “You said you weren’t interested.”

That’s still true, and John is sorely tempted to tell him as much. He clamps down on the urge. “Am I supposed to report every stray thought in my head to you?”

Silence. “Is there something you want to tell me, John?” Santino says in a voice that would give the Arctic Circle frostbite.

He could tell Santino his stance has changed. He should. But he’s not that good of a liar and he doesn’t trust his tongue to make the words come out right. So he reminds himself he needs to do this, draws forward his well of calm, says, “Maybe I needed some air and a few less complications,” and makes his escape from the library before this can turn into a proper argument. Even though he’s full of shit. Even though air is the last thing he wants and he could not factually give less of a fuck about complications right now.

Two weeks after John starts seeing Helen semi-regularly and avoiding all indication of affection with Santino on a daily basis, Santino starts working his way through a string of pretty boys in his apartment in Rome, all of them far too naive to have even a vague understanding of the lion's den they wandered into. He keeps John as his bodyguard down the hall, though more than one of the pretty boys claim to be more than a bit creeped out by the knowledge that John is just down the hall emanating an aura of first-degree murder.

Nominally, it’s a precaution Santino always takes on the off chance one of his partners happens to be dangerous. Then again, he could have Ares or Sameen do this, but he doesn’t. Sameen and Ares get evicted to the lower floor and John is always the one told to stay, cleaning his guns and seething under the sounds from the record player as if his mind can’t fill in the missing sounds louder than his ears ever could.

And it stings still worse that not one of them is mob-affiliated. Not one of them is business.

He mentions the incidents to Helen, mostly because they start to occur with such regularity that he often has to cancel plans last-minute. The fact of being sitting security while his boss has one-night stands, anyway. He does not mention that Santino has him sitting outside while he has a man in his bedroom. He suspects that would go over poorly, somehow, though he couldn’t quite say why.

At least until one night when he mutters something about it and Helen quips, “You know, if you weren’t his security, I’d almost think he’s trying to make you jealous.”

“I’m not his type.” John’s not honest, either, and he’s grateful that Helen hasn’t figured out how to tell when he’s lying.

“Then he’s got terrible taste. On second thought, atrocious taste. Aren’t they all, like, early twenties or something?”

John changes the subject. He can’t lie gracefully while gritting his teeth.

Of course, Santino can’t spend all of his time fucking other men to throw it in John’s face. He can’t even spend half of his time that way. It would be easier if he did, because the times Santino isn’t fucking other men are infinitely worse. Because those are the times when it becomes more painfully obvious with every passing day how much time John and Santino actually spent together, their own peculiar brand of quiet affection made all the more obvious for the gaping hole where it used to be. Santino keeps looking to John for a cue, and instead of giving him one, John keeps setting this thing with Santino on fire, walling himself in behind his calm where he can’t hurt Santino, reminding himself every time that Santino will be safe from him on the other side of the wall, that Santino being safe is the only thing that matters.

And it…hurts. A little bit worse every time.

It makes the rest of the staff nervous, and not just because they have to run for cover when John and Santino argue or try to go unnoticed when there’s fourth-degree frostbite in the air. They’re nervous because Santino doesn’t normally do this. Not the one-night stands. He does _that_ all the time, John thinks with no small amount of bitterness. The rest of the staff is nervous because Santino mounting a constant effort to hurt John at every available opportunity is completely antithetical to Santino’s normal approach to the people who work for him.

Viggo generally treated John with politeness and respect, but he also took for granted the loyalty of the unimportant players who surrounded him—the wall of muscle expected to step in the way of bullets meant for him, the staff who kept his home presentable, his drivers, his mechanics. Santino is naturally demanding, intuitively cruel, impressively vindictive, and also a stone-cold psychopath, but he's not cruel or vindictive with his staff, and while they are unnerved by the unexpected side effects of Santino’s hardwiring, they’ve never once felt the brunt of it turned on them. He wiped out Yvette’s debts to Le Milieu and helped her find a fresh start and safe haven in Rome, made sure Matteo’s mother had access to the best doctors in the country when she had cancer, helped Bedelia track down her art thief sister in LA and Boston and Portland and get said art thief sister out of more than one hairy situation with Interpol, found a lab and a Ph.D. advisor in Rome for Cosima to follow Delphine overseas when Bedelia snatched her as a freshly graduated art history Masters student from UCLA, furnished Cosima with supplies no matter the cost or rarity to develop a treatment for the autoimmune disease that was killing her sisters, broke Ares out of a CIA-Special Forces experimental weapons program where she was viewed as little more than a conveniently silent tool of mass destruction and entrusted her with the keeping of men she views as her brothers, found Sameen washed up in Berlin after Army Intelligence Support burned her and gave her a new life, a purpose, and Ares, helped Mischa wipe out the men who murdered her entire family and somehow in the process made introductions between Mischa and the chef who has been her restaurant partner for the past six years, converted the chapel into apartments as a gift of peace and quiet to Doria and left the altar intact for her so she could pray each morning and each night in her favorite part of the whole property.

Even the makeup of his security staff is an expression of loyalty that’s uncommon in mob bosses. About a quarter of his security boys, the older ones, were originally hired by his father—Lorenzo, for example, was hired by Giovanni at the age of twenty to be a primary bodyguard to the then-thirteen-year-old Santino along with several more of the older boys, while Valentine, Sergio, Damon, and Tommaso all used to be in Giovanni’s regular security detail. Which is to say that this quarter of Santino’s security boys were there before, during, and after the transfer of power and that whatever this quarter of Santino’s security boys saw in the younger Santino made them viciously protective of him, a loyalty they curry in the younger men with tireless dedication. Francesco and Doria do too, being relics of that era and equally tight-lipped about it, though their endless care in attending to every square inch of the house and the surrounding grounds speaks louder than their squabbling about dirt on the floor and the right way to tend to the plants. And Anthony, while not a relic of that era, has an abiding sense of loyalty and warmth toward Santino that very nearly matches Francesco—after all, Santino and Flora found him with a shattered spine after failing to drive his car off a bridge in Edinburgh and, after nursing him back to health, brought him back to Rome to turn his talents as a driver and mechanic into something that would sustain him, and in the meantime helped him finally locate his childhood best friend running a used bookshop in London, who he writes to every single week despite the fact that they talk on the phone every night for an hour like an old married couple.

Santino is an asshole of the world record variety, but he dedicates incredible care and attentiveness to ensuring every person in his orbit is wholeheartedly _his_ , in much the same way a moon could never conceive of slipping out of orbit of the planet keeping it from careening off into darkness alone.

After all, for all that Caroline and Flora built Santino’s empire as the other two-thirds of him, it was Doria who cemented Santino's father's downfall and Santino's subsequent rise to power. She never forgave Giovanni for snapping Massima’s neck in front of their fourteen-year-old children when he mistakenly thought she was having an affair, nor did Doria forgive him for remarrying a French painter and having a daughter with her barely two years later when he already had Massima’s son, who was sixteen and brilliant and who Doria loved as if he was her own child. It did not matter how fond she was of baby Gianna or her delight when Giovanni named her after the man who hired Doria. She hated Manon Laschelles almost as much as she adored Massima Rosalia, just one more symbol of Giovanni’s lifelong fear and loathing for his son which was, in Doria’s eyes, the only sin for which she could not forgive him. Doria guaranteed that Manon could escape to a new life in Los Angeles with the Rosalias’ aid when Gianna was a year old just as much as she guaranteed Giovanni’s death came to pass.

And then there’s John, for whom Santino’s possessiveness and its concurrent cruelty when denied transcend Santino’s typical care in cultivating loyalty and attachment. Then again, for all that Santino is viciously pissed off at John about Helen, they both know John has no intention of leaving and no desire to be anywhere else. Worse, they both know exactly where John wants to be and that John refuses to be there, and the knowledge angers Santino more than if John actually wanted to leave.

Also, there’s the minor detail that Santino wasn’t fucking the rest of the staff.

And the more John carefully neglects to mention that minor detail to Helen, the more he feels Santino’s possessiveness wrapped around him like a second skin. He’d tell himself it’s like a cocoon wrapped around him, trapping him inside, but that would imply there’s a future in which he tried to break free of it, and he’s not that good of a liar, even to himself. He’s not quite good enough of a liar to convince himself he doesn’t want turn right around and go home where he belongs every time he leaves to visit Helen either, nor can he convince himself it’s not getting worse every time he does, but he’s cultivated denial as a life skill.

John doesn’t try to convince himself that Santino’s not getting progressively worse about it as time wears on. Mostly because it doesn’t do any good to deny the impulse to strangle Santino for being an unrepentant asshole every time he knows John intends to meet Helen (beyond preventing himself from strangling Santino, anyway). Also, it’s difficult to pretend the impulse doesn’t exist when Santino invariably fucks over every other time John tries to leave for air. He doesn’t let himself show up in front of Helen until he’s calm again, which takes a bit longer when a one-night stand is involved. Helen doesn’t know she ought to be terrified of him, and it’s soothing to be just John, even if being just John means keeping his head and tongue on tight leashes.

He can be calm when he’s just John. He can be safe when he’s just John.

Helen comments once that she’d be more upset by it than he seems to be. He just replies that he’s not easily upset by things, to which she quips if he were any more Zen he’d levitate. He laughs and doesn’t bother to correct her that it’s not Zen, because then he would have to explain what it actually is, and that way lies explaining that she ought to be terrified of him, and he wants to preserve this one respite in his life. 

Even so, John’s not at ease with Helen either.

It takes a while to notice it, and the discovery only occurs when they’re actually alone together for the first time and he’s no longer reflecting the general mood of the room back at her. John’s not putting on a mask, and it puts Helen off-balance. After all, he got used to Santino, who is the same way and perfectly at ease when neither of them have masks on. Caroline is the same way, as is Sameen, Flora and Ares don’t mind it, and the rest of the house is, if not at ease with it, then at least accustomed to it.

Except that Helen is a normal person, and he forgot that normal people are unsettled by that.

It takes a try or two to remember how to do it, because even before Santino, John was years out of practice. He was never as adept as Santino, could never make himself inviting and warm and bright the way Santino does, but he could at least make himself reflective rather than presenting the families that took him in and sent him back over the years with an empty mirror. When he was young, the families that took him in sent him back quickly because they were unsettled by him, and as he grew older, the families that took him in sent him back because they wanted a lively boy and what they got was a calm, quiet, detached boy who was polite and attentive but never seemed affected by anything thrown his way. Only a few families saw him when he wasn’t calm, when he was affected by things thrown his way, and they couldn’t send him back fast enough. Eventually, he got too old for any more families to take, and he had no more use for his masks on the street. Still less use for them when Marcus and Viggo spotted him in a street fight and brought him into the fold to train him in the bratva, where his blank calm and his steady focus like the pull of gravity was thought of as a persona crafted through years of violence when, in reality, it was just John not filtering himself to avoid upsetting anyone.

But it upsets Helen. She’s wary and uneasy that first time they’re alone in her apartment, and afterward, John calls her to apologize for being in an off-kilter mood, says that work has been difficult lately. He can see it in Helen’s face when he manages to find his mask again, how she finally relaxes even as he settles into the rhythm of mental ballet, constantly watching emotional responses so that he can reflect the right response back at her. He’s exhausted when he leaves that night, his mind so sore from exercising long-forgotten muscles that his entire body is stiff.

It takes a longer than it should (because John has cultivated denial as a life skill) to recognize that part of why he’s so exhausted every time he comes back is that he wants more than anything to go to the music in the back of the house, to let himself unravel something that’s been terse and tense since the Colombians. He almost does more often than he’d care to admit. But every time, John reminds himself of the Colombians, of the car crashing into them and jolting back to himself with the keening, savage creature under his skin awake and alive and solely concerned with how to use his talents to keep on killing until there was no one left alive. John reminds himself that he needs to be safe, and to do that he needs to be calm, and so he turns to tread up the stairs.

He could swear the stairs get longer every time. Especially when he comes back to find the house doesn’t have piano music, or harpsichord, or records, or any sound at all, for that matter.

Santino gets migraines, though they're rare, incomprehensible in their onset, and indifferent to any treatment Flora throws at them. The only consistent feature John can identify is those times when Santino's brain knows it ought to feel emotional pain but doesn't know how, so it approximates with physical pain Santino can understand. Except it doesn't understand emotional pain and has no scale to approximate with and also, Santino's brain doesn't know what ought to qualify as a highly emotional event, just that it takes a lot of stimuli to get there. Which is to say it runs the gamut from being hit by a train to a nuclear bomb blast and sets in with the same abruptness.

Since John arrived, he's had two. The first was a month after John arrived, when Caroline got held up repairing one of her servers in Sao Paolo. That time, Santino showed up to breakfast and barred visitors from the house for the day. Apparently, his vision looked as if someone was stirring wet paint, if said paint was bright enough to burn his eyes out of his head. It devolved into nausea and an ugly headache by the afternoon, at which point Sameen gave him nausea shots and painkillers over his protests and ordered him to stop being a fucking idiot. The second was in the spring when John and Flora were caught in an exploding building. Flora got a text as soon as they were in the car, and they returned to the house to find it still and silent and dark as a grave, Flora cursing and grabbing his sleeve to haul him with her to the master bedroom, which was darker and quieter still. John sat down in a chair at the far end of the room, letting the stillness and silence of the room wash over him so he could listen for threats. He only left to scare off an associate they forgot to call. _Scare off_ meaning _kneecap him_ upon hearing him mutter that it's reassuring to know Santino is human enough to feel under the weather, because Flora wasn't there to kneecap him herself and because John was wading through the frightening realization that Santino is entirely human. John's still not sure if staying or kneecapping was his place to fulfill, nor has he grown any more comfortable with that realization over time, but Santino rallied a few days later, and they never spoke of it again.

In Sameen's highly scientific medical terms, symptoms range from general bitchiness about certain smells to nausea as a modern torture instrument to death being too loud. The dead silence in the house makes it quite clear which end of the spectrum these are, confirmed when Santino eventually surfaces looking ashen and bleary. John remembers Flora telling him after the first one that Santino doesn’t get them as often as he used to, not since the early years. Not since Giovanni died. He used to get them all the time when he couldn’t slam the brakes any other way. Now he only gets them a few times a year.

Except, apparently, this year. This summer. This summer, after John starts avoiding him, the telltale signs show up every other week. John stays just out of range and listens for threats, though he doesn’t try to convince himself that staying away is anything other than cruel.

If there is any silver lining to the situation (if indeed it can be called a silver lining and not a wire waiting to thread around his neck), religiously avoiding Santino means John has a lot more time to notice the rest of the house.

Ares and Sameen, for instance, take it upon themselves after that first uncomfortable week to drag him along to the outbuildings for regular card game nights with the boys. They don’t seem to mind that he’s not inclined to play or talk. Instead , they talk at him, looping him in on the gossip and goings-on among the boys like he’s one of them, as though his silence doesn’t bother them. They seem bound and determined to keep on dragging him anyway and seem delighted when he finally starts participating in conversations, if only through sign language.

The boys start awkwardly ambling up to him to strike up minor conversations about pointless things whenever they see him keeping a measured distance from Santino. He can’t figure out why the hell they’re doing it until Lorenzo looks up from shuffling cards one night and asks, “So…things alright with you and Santino?”

John doesn’t look up from his book. It’s easier to mask when it seems like he’s not paying attention. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

This time, though, he knows they’re not talking about the boys being disturbed by John and Santino spending extended periods of time in each other’s presence without acknowledging each other’s existence. “It’s just, you know,” Lorenzo is fiddling with the cards, not quite shuffling so much as hoping he shakes the right sentence out of them, “it seems like things got a bit awkward. After the thing in San Luca.”

“And the talk you had in the orchard,” Constantine says. “After San Luca. And the thing in the study.”

The thing in the study is the only reason Santino’s wrath hasn’t fallen on Helen, which is that John overheard Santino muttering something violent, buried a letter opener in the desk an inch to the left of Santino’s hand, and leaned in his face to hiss in Russian, “You’re pissed at me. Be pissed at me. But if you take it out on Helen I actually will leave,” before beating a hasty retreat because it’s the closest he’s let himself get in weeks. John’s full of shit and Santino knows it, but thus far, he hasn’t tested John’s word.

“Seemed like awkward conversations is all,” Athos says when it becomes clear John isn’t going to answer, then adds, “And then it seemed like things got awkward after that,” because he has the social graces of a fucking brick. He earns a swift kick from Matteo for his trouble.

When it becomes clear John isn’t going to look at them, Sameen chimes in, “These dipshits are trying to ask if you want to talk about it.”

John resists the urge to clench his jaw. “You know what we said.”

“No, actually.”

“You saw the feeds. We were well within range of the cameras.”

“Caroline stopped the audio feeds from transmitting,” Matteo says, which confirms that they were watching. “And then wiped the video feeds from the memory drives.”

That marginally lessens John’s urge to strangle Caroline. Marginally. He elects not to respond to that and turn the page of his book as though he’s processing any of the words in front of him.

“No pressure or anything,” Constantine says, “but if you want to talk about it, we’ve got ears.”

John looks up from his book and stares at Constantine with dead eyes until Constantine flinches away.

Yvette and Delphine and Bedelia, having far more social graces than the boys, take it upon themselves as the few people whose jobs regularly leave them in the house to strike up conversations with far less awkwardness. Yvette always asks about whatever book he’s reading, which quickly reveals her knowledge of the house’s library. It also reveals that Yvette’s working on her own fiction, which she happily chatters about each time he quietly asks how she’s progressing. Delphine and Bedelia, for their part, strike up conversations with him about the art, Delphine about the technique, Bedelia about the stories behind each painting. And once Bedelia ventures to ask about the camera in his room, photography loops into the conversations too. The fact that John photographs people because half the time the camera is used to scope out targets doesn’t seem to bother her. She just keeps asking about what he sees through the lens. Seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, Bedelia says, laughing her subdued laugh when he replies that the world through his eyes isn’t worth peering at.

“I suppose that’s a matter of perspective,” she says, turning away to pick up her phone when it rings.

Cosima stops him a few days after the pretty boys pick up speed and asks if he wants to join them in the parlor for a bit. And when he offers up what is probably the least subtle excuse she’s heard all year, she just smiles at him.

“No worries, man. Door’s always open. Same thing in the chapel too, if you want some space.”

Doria catches him considering in the garden that weekend, shakes her head, and takes him by the arm to march him to the chapel, patting his arm and offering to put on tea as soon as they step through the door to what looks like a communal living room and kitchen. An oddly hilarious scene waits for them: Bedelia and Tali chatting over wine and an array of printed photographs, Ziva preparing what looks like a giant casserole dish of moussaka, Cosima and Delphine working on homework on the coffee table while Ares, Sameen, and Yvette debate the finer points of the monster in the _Scooby Doo_ episode projected on the blank back wall from the small film projector on the coffee table. Cosima grins ear to ear as soon as she spots him and trots up to take him by the wrist like she can’t tell that he should go back to the house where he belongs, leading him back to sit in the marginally safe area code on the couch near Sameen and Ares, who are at least familiar and immediately ask what took him so damn long to join the fun.

The communal living room and kitchen are the two places where all the women in the chapel share influence with Flora's uniting design principles tying it all together. The space is populated by everything from Doria's giant basket of yarn taking up the bottom of one bookshelf to Mischa's world tour of cookbooks to Cosima's board game collection to Ziva's boxing magazines to Tali's cameras to Delphine's TARDIS cookie jar to a framed copy of the magazine where Yvette had a short story published last year to Bedelia's orchids.

At John’s questioning look at _Scooby Doo_ , Cosima shrugs. “It's almost like having TV. Caroline does her best to find stuff for us.”

Which would explain why the back hallway in front of the altar is lined with labeled film canisters, their titles ranging from black and white French movies to _Twin Peaks_ to a hodgepodge of Ares's cartoons and anime shows matching the hodgepodge in the house and the boys' outbuildings depending on what Ares watches with who. There's an equally schizophrenic collection of records with an impressive collection of showtunes, apparently to the credit of Mischa and Cosima's theater nut sister, Allison, which is perhaps why the selection runs the gamut from the classics ( _Cabaret, Chicago_ ) to modern ( _Hamilton, Hadestown_ ) to the outright absurd ( _Six_ ). It would explain where the hell Cosima got the _Beetlejuice_ record from. Still, if there was ever a representation of the hilarious differences between the various women in the chapel, the record collection is it: electronica (Cosima), French trance (Delphine), a world tour of pop (Yvette), Israeli and Arab hip hop (Tali and Ziva), showtunes (Mischa), New Orleans jazz (Bedelia), and classical religious music (Doria). 

Santino sends one of the boys out to get him an hour later for work, though John finds himself invited/dragged out to the chapel on more than one occasion, and while, as in the outbuildings, he never loses the sensation of being an intruder looking through the glass, there’s at least more breathing room than in the house.

They clearly want to ask him what happened with Santino, but having more social intelligence than the boys have in their little fingers, their approach is to keep inviting him in like they’re coaxing a stray cat from the gutter in the hopes he’ll eventually say something without prompting. Except Doria, who looks up from her knitting more than once with a look in her eye and opens her mouth to say something, or Bedelia, who settles near him after more than one terse exchange with Santino. Both of them meet dead stares or a snapped, “Don’t.”

Then there’s Gianna. 

Gianna is here now. Waking up at ass o’clock in the morning to make use of the mirrors, ballet bar, mats, balance beam, uneven bars, parallel bars, rings, vault, and pommel horse in the ballroom for ballet training (after the first morning realizing Gianna was there, John shifts to using the equipment at other times of day, easy enough considering that he’s trying to avoid Santino and in any case, the ballroom doors are locked and the blackout curtains drawn when Gianna trains in there, as clear a _fuck off_ as any). Emerging freshly showered for breakfast each morning to drink her coffee at the breakfast table across from her brother (John takes to drinking his leaning against the counter). Working on what looks suspiciously like Matisse forgeries on the loggia outside whatever room Santino happens to be in on that side of the house so she can keep up a steady stream of running commentary (John makes note of the forgery of the week and finds a reason to be elsewhere). Greeting John when he slips in and out of the library or the study for a book, complete with side commentary on his reading material (John nods in acknowledgment and ducks away before Santino can snap at him to fuck off). Sleeping in the room mirroring his own on the other side of the house (though John spends more time aware of the master bedroom across the hall). 

It's a perfectly inverted reflection of John's room in architecture and layout, even in the blue color scheme. It's the details that give it away as a different room altogether, and that makes the room more disorienting for its familiarity. Gianna's bed, for example, is a four-poster upholstered in fabric the deep blue-green of sea glass and hung with silver-blue curtains. Where John's bed has leather trunks at the foot, Gianna has a beautiful Renaissance cassone, a family heirloom that was Giovanni's wedding present to her mother. There's a bookshelf in the same position as John’s, but it's populated by Gianna's art books and painting supplies and a gilded silver clock, and where John's room has white de Waal vases, Gianna's is full of white marble busts and small marble statues, all of D'Antonio women. Where a mirror in a heavy bronze frame hangs in John's room, Gianna has an heirloom silver French mirror. But the most striking difference to John is that where his room has a painting of a goldfinch chained to a perch, Gianna's room has an oil painting of two ibises signed _Manon Laschelles_. One of the ibises has eggshell-white feathers and a navy head, but it's smaller than the other one, a great bird with spread wings in fantastical emerald and garnet and gold only recognizable as an ibis for the fact of looking like the smaller bird. That's not what's striking about the painting. What's striking is that the smaller ibis is completely upside down, its entire body suspended off the ground by its neck, which is wrapped in a stranglehold around the neck of its fantastical brother, its beak trapped shut in the gold beak of the other bird, its wings useless beneath it and its legs clawing the air while the jewel-toned wings of its brother beat its grip loose. This is a fight that will only end one of two ways: either both birds stop fighting and disentangle themselves, or one party stops fighting by virtue of running out of air.

Gianna is not pleased to vacate Flora’s apartment in Paris and resume permanent residence in Rome. But to be fair, she’s on house arrest between her escapade with the Russians and the still-evolving clusterfuck of the Five Families. In theory, anyway. After the first week, Caroline and Flora take Gianna’s unplanned shelter-in-place order as an opportunity to drag her into every flavor of business training they can conceive of. It has the fringe benefit of getting Gianna out of the house to extend her house arrest to Flora’s palazzo or Caroline’s apartment, which in turn has the fringe benefit of keeping her from aggravating Santino’s black moods too much. Which means that while Gianna technically lives at the house full-time now, between the jobs Santino throws in John’s lap and Flora and Caroline stealing her away John barely sees her for any extended period of time.

This means that, on one hand, breakfast and dinner are an adventure in how badly Gianna will prod Santino with a stick and whether he’ll subsequently take it in good cheer, tell her to fuck off, or take her fucking head off. On the other hand, it’s oddly fascinating theatre, insofar as Santino and Gianna more are more like parent and child than brother and sister. John knows, intellectually, that Santino raised Gianna for more of her life than Giovanni and was so deeply involved in her life when Giovanni was alive that he was functionally raising her even then, but seeing it in action is nonetheless peculiar. They seem most like brother and sister when they argue (which is fairly regularly, given that Gianna is stuck in her birdcage and can only get her kicks by prodding her brother with a stick through the bars), and even then, the power imbalance is hilariously tilted in Santino’s favor. This is unquestionably Santino’s house and these are unquestionably Santino’s people, and Gianna’s invitation to stay is as much on his good graces as her invitation to go. All of this will be Gianna’s one day, and it’s crystal clear (to John, at least) by Santino’s endless doting on Gianna that he fully intends for that future to happen. But until Santino hands over the keys to his universe, Gianna remains a visitor present by his invitation and empowered only insofar as Santino grants it to her. That’s not the problem, per se.

The problem is that Gianna seems to hold this fundamental fact of their relationship against him.

Some days, Gianna doesn’t seem to mind it so much. Some days, it almost seems like she could be like Flora and Caroline, who come and go as freely as Santino himself with as much sway in the fabric of their world as Santino himself. Those are the days she keeps a running commentary on his choice in music and a library of snarky quips about the people coming to visit her brother, and those are the days Santino laughs with her and offers his own stream of commentary on her progressing artwork. Others, it’s abundantly clear that Gianna occupies a parallel universe from Flora and Caroline, watching them through the glass as life marches on outside her reach. Those are the days when their conversations are rife with razor blades waiting to slice an unsuspecting foot, when every sentence is a war Gianna is destined to lose but nonetheless intends to give Santino hell until it’s over.

Most days carry an undercurrent, depending on how much Gianna seems to mind it that day.

At best, Santino greets her venom with maskless tiredness and dead eyes, either holding her barbs at arm’s length with what feels like twenty-one years of exhaustion or simply refusing to engage with her. Most days, even his affability carries that undercurrent. At worst, Santino’s masks snap into place for battle and he meets her every parry with a stab like he fully intends to heave her over the cliff birdcage and all to watch with dead eyes as she hits water made hard as concrete by the distance of the fall.

The only time Santino and Gianna don’t have that undercurrent is when Gianna’s doing ballet training in the ballroom at ass o’clock in the morning at Santino’s insistence. At least, John could swear several times that Santino is in the ballroom with his sister at ass o’clock in the morning, could swear he hears two people moving, could swear he hears Santino’s voice, except that doesn’t make any sense, because there are never any sounds behind the blackout curtains and locked doors that suggest Santino is working.

John does catch Flora and Gianna leaving the ballroom together a few times, though, both of them in dancing clothes and sweaty. And when he raises a bemused eyebrow at Flora, Gianna grins. “What? Rosalias have been training their kids like this for generations.”

“Like this?”

Gianna grins wider and drops her voice like she’s sharing a secret, too low for the cameras at either end of the hall to hear her. “Red Room,” she says, like the two words mean nothing at all, like they don’t drop into John’s bones like lead bricks in the ocean.

Flora promptly hits her upside the head.

Gianna glares, rubbing her head where Flora hit her. “What the fuck, Flora?”

Flora’s face says Gianna’s due to be burned at the stake any minute now. “You knock your brains out in there, or are you that stupid naturally?”

“Will you relax? John’s not a threat.”

“You know the rules. So shut the fuck up before I shut you up.”

Gianna tilts her head toward John. She doesn’t take her eyes off Flora though, just in case. “Come on, Flora, you know what people say.”

Flora’s face says Gianna will be burned at the stake within the next five seconds, her voice dropping to the hiss of a flaring match. “I don’t give a fuck what people say. Do you have proof?”

“No, but—”

“No buts. You don’t have proof, you don’t run your fucking mouth.”

Gianna gives Flora a look at says she’s full of shit. “You know.”

Flora’s eyes narrow in warning. “It doesn’t matter what I know. It matters what you know, and you don’t know shit. So shut the fuck up and go shower before I tell the family how much shit you don’t know.”

Gianna takes the hint and bails. John doesn’t breathe any easier. Still, Flora turns to him and says in quiet Russian, “Massima taught us herself. We’ve been training like this since we were four.”

Except Massima wasn’t alive when Gianna was four, and Gianna wasn’t alive when Flora was four, and there’s only one other person that _us_ and _we_ could encompass, and John could ask, but he has a feeling Flora would tell him to ask Santino in the interest of shoving him into a conversation with Santino, and that way lies clipped words and possibly stabbing. So John does the reasonable thing to do, which is pretend he didn’t see or hear anything and make a point of avoiding the ballroom anytime he reasonably suspects more than one person is there, which is most mornings Gianna is there. It’s easy enough, what with the locked doors and blackout curtains, and in any case, it’s a great reason to avoid the echoes of _Red Room_ rattling around in his skull too, along with everything those two words mean. 

He avoids everyone for days after that. Because those two words don’t bother him as much as they used to, but Gianna caught him by surprise. Gianna doesn’t have any confirmation of the tattoo on his back any more than Helen knows what the tattoo means (which is to say not at all). Flora does, though, because she’s patched him before in an emergency. Which is the only reason Flora doesn’t loose the family’s wrath on Gianna to shut her up for good. Which is fine and good for the family. John, though, wandered unsuspecting into _Red Room_ and Gianna saying those words more casually than he’s ever heard anyone say those words, as though it’s casual to him too.

It isn’t.

Nothing he does makes those two words go away. He notices more than he lets himself normally notice when he acquires more weapons from his own suppliers to hide in his own room alone while the camera in the clock on the bookshelf is ever-so-casually blocked by his camera bag, when he checks and re-checks the lock to the passageway in the wall of his room next to the bookshelf, when he sleeps with his knees pulled into his chest facing toward the door.

Helen finally drags him out of his hiding place seven days later, and he knows as soon as she lays eyes on him that he was right to hide.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine. We should head in if we’re going to get a table.” They’re going to a restaurant, the kind Helen likes with buttery light where she can see John more clearly, as if putting John in the right light will allow her to see him properly. John prefers bars—they’re full of people who are only pretending to be dangerous, loud enough that he can pretend he doesn’t hear her right away when Helen asks a question requiring him to scramble for a normal answer, and dark enough that Helen can’t tell when he’s too tired to lie well.

“Hey.” She catches his elbow and tugs him to face her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You just…” Helen blinks at him, studying his face with an intensity that bodes poorly. John chants _warm and calm, warm and calm_ in his head, willing her to see that and not whatever’s still lurking in his eyes. “You seem different, is all.”

He feigns surprise, a twitch of the brows and a quirk of the lips like it’s funny and confusing. “How so?”

Helen keeps studying him. John wills her to stop looking. She won’t like what she sees, but she doesn’t know that. “You seem almost like a different person.”

He is a different person. He’s John Wick with _Red Room_ rattling around in his brain, not just John. She doesn’t know John Wick, and she certainly doesn’t know John Wick in the context of _Red Room_. She’d run for the far end of the world if she knew him like that. So John forces a laugh that he hopes sounds natural enough, willing himself to be just John. “I can confirm I’m still me.”

It must be natural enough, or at least Helen can sense she’s not going to get anywhere, because she laughs and takes the arm he offers her. “Yeah. It’s ridiculous, sorry.”

“Don’t be. I appreciate the sentiment anyway.” He pulls open the door and waves her in grandly, earning a real laugh. A step in the right direction.

Still, when the hostess says it’ll be thirty minutes, John murmurs to Helen, “I think I might run to the restroom, give me a sec?” before he has time to overthink it. He manages to smile at her before stalking to the back of the restaurant toward the men’s room, though he’s not sure how.

He knows this restaurant, so he knows it’s a one-person bathroom, and blessedly, no one is in it when he gets there. Closing the door and locking it leaves him in stark quiet, and he leans his hands on the sink, letting out a long breath with his eyes squeezed shut.

He opens his eyes to meet his own gaze in the mirror, and he knows what Helen meant when she said _you seem like a different person_. He looks like a different person. He’s not masking very well. There are too many shadows in his face for an ordinary person, and while Helen doesn’t have enough context to see what the echoes in his eyes mean, John knows exactly what they mean.

“Be safe,” he tells his reflection. “Be calm. Be normal.”

Except he can’t remember how to feel safe when he can feel that damn tattoo digging into his back, he seems to be getting further away from calm with every successive day he avoids Santino, and he sure as shit doesn’t know how to be normal. He doesn’t have any context to draw on. Santino’s in a parallel universe from Helen, and John never stayed before, so he never had people. The only person he had in New York in any real way was Marcus, and…well. Marcus. Marcus isn’t anything like Helen either, because it didn’t do much good to pretend to be something he wasn’t when he knew where Marcus hid all the weapons in his house and borrowed several guns over the years on his way out the door at all hours for a contract.

Marcus used to know where John hid his guns. But he hasn’t known where John hid his guns for seven years, and that doesn’t bear thinking about. Certainly not when he’s trying to be just John. So he meets his own eye in the mirror and draws ten breaths telling himself to get his shit together.

It doesn’t work. His brain resists mental ballet in favor of scanning the room for threats, to the point that Helen asks if he’s looking for someone, and John shakes his head and apologizes, says old habits are dying hard tonight, says it was a hard week. He forces himself to stop scanning the room and look at her, grinds down the siren scream in the back of his head that says he’s in danger if he doesn’t, and rides on the tide of the room, grateful that at least they’re not alone.

Still, he’s not kidding himself about his relative success at pretending to be safe and calm and normal, so when they finally leave and Helen asks, “You want to come back to mine for a bit?” he shakes his head.

“Rain check?” He could go back to Helen’s for a bit, but he doesn’t have a reasonable excuse to be there and gone relatively quickly, or at least he’s too tired to think of one, and being in Helen’s apartment alone means he won’t be able to hide how far off he is from a safe just John that Helen needs to feel comfortable. There’s an easy enough way to distract her, but John doesn’t want to do that when there’s a real risk of her running her hands over his tattoo, because Helen likes tracing her fingers over his tattoos and has, as a consequence, eaten up lies John has invented about the meaning of every single one of his tattoos except the praying hands over the cross, which was merely a quarter of a truth. She doesn’t know what any of his tattoos really mean, certainly not the brand that feels like it’s burning into his back worse than it did when the needle gun stitched it onto him forever. So he can’t go back to Helen’s apartment, because he knows he’ll jerk away from her as soon as her hands pass over that tattoo, and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a good lie. But he can’t tell her that, of course, so he settles for, “I’m kind of beat.”

“John.” She catches him before he can step toward his car, her face suddenly quiet. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

In theory, sure. In practice, there’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t light this fragile thing with Helen on fire. That wouldn’t make her afraid of him. So instead he says, “Nothing to talk about. I’m just tired.”

Tired enough that he gets back to his own room at the house, locks the door behind him, makes sure the panel is still locked, and makes his way to the closet. There’s a phone he keeps in the back of his sock drawer where he doesn’t have to see it in the desk every day, the one he always keeps charged but never uses for work. He closes the closet door behind him and sits on the floor against the wall, lit only by the phone screen, and listens to the voicemails Marcus left him eight and nine and ten years ago, the ones that have traveled from phone to phone in a SIM card and backed up as contextless audio files on his computer just in case, the ones from the three-year stretch backing directly up to when Marcus stopped knowing where John hid his guns.

The last one, the most recent of all, is one of the shortest. _Hey John. I know what I said before you left, but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_Hey John. I know what I said before you left, but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_John. I know what I said before you left, but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_I know what I said before you left, but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_you left, but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_but…call me when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_when you’re back. Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_

_Just…just call me back, okay?_

_call me back, okay?_

_okay?_

_okay?_

_okay?_

He could call Marcus. It’s only about four there. But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know what to say to Marcus any more than he knows what to say to Helen. He hasn’t known what to say to Marcus in seven years. So he stays hidden in the dark, in his quiet black box alone where no one can find him until his spine screams at him to stop sitting on the floor, at which point he changes into sleeping clothes, checks the locks again, reaffirms the position of every weapon in his room, and curls up to sleep facing toward the door.

Only to bolt wide awake to Gianna screaming.

It takes a second to realize he’s got a gun in his hand pointed at an attacker that isn’t there, and that it’s the next morning, at ass o’clock, and Gianna is in her own room cussing out Santino and Flora in three languages, Sameen cussing Gianna out with equal volume and creativity and Santino snarling at Gianna to _shut the fuck up_. It takes another ten seconds to come down from the adrenaline, much longer than he usually needs, and he sits stock still listening to Gianna snarl curses at Santino and Flora until he hears the ballroom doors slam and lock as Sameen shouts insults at their ancestors.

He knows what just happened.

That makes it a lot worse.

He checks the passageway lock and every possible hiding place in his room with the safety of the gun off, then hides in the shower until the water runs cold and waits until he’s sure no one will startle him in the hallway to emerge for coffee, not letting himself think about how he’s going to deal with it if this becomes a routine occurrence.

It’s a good thing he’s not armed when Yurei darts into the hall from the courtyard and twines across his feet, purring her ghost whisper of a purr. And a good thing he was already in the shower for an hour and watching to make sure he’s not startled again, because his reaction is simply to run a hand across her back and step carefully around her, because he can’t trust himself to pick her up, because he can’t trust himself not to hurt her. She meows and trots ahead of him as if showing him the way, and sure enough, there’s already noise in the kitchen. Flora and Caroline are already here, Yurei darting across Doria’s feet to hop on the table and rub her head across Caroline’s chest.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Flora calls, scritching Yurei’s back when she rubs across Flora’s shoulders too.

John doesn’t answer, just steps into the kitchen and focuses on making his way toward the coffee, well out of range of anyone else in the room.

“Someone’s talkative,” Sameen says. “Can’t imagine why what with the _rude awakening we had this morning_.”

“Well excuse me,” Gianna retorts. John doesn’t need to look to hear her glaring. “A scream is a traditional response to waking up with Flora standing over you with a _fucking knife_. And Santino lunging at me to cover my mouth.”

“Better me and him than someone who actually wants to kill you,” Flora says brightly. “You really need to work on your response time.”

John starts the coffee maker so they can’t hear him grinding his teeth.

“ _I was asleep_.”

“ _So were we_ ,” Sameen says in the same tone.

“You asked to train with us,” Santino says, unimpressed as ever by Gianna’s anger. “Begged our father, actually.”

“ _I was five_.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” he replies in a frigid tone that says he’s not at all pleased with her. John’s really not sure what he expected to happen after waking his sister up with a knife.

“We didn’t do this shit while I was in school.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

Ares flips all three of them off.

“Besides, the Rosalia cousins in Switzerland and France weren’t about to wake up the entire school,” Flora says cheerfully, for all the world as if several people don’t want to murder her, “and we had other shit to do over the summers. But now you’ve got us _all to yourself_. Aren’t you _lucky?_ ”

John takes a mug from the cupboard and sets it on the counter with a bang that sends the entire kitchen a foot in the air. He doesn’t let himself look up from the coffee machine, even though he can feel the room staring at him.

“You need me today?” John’s not quite sure how he forces that sentence out. He’s not quite sure how he gets himself to look up from the coffee maker and meet Santino’s eye either, given that he _really_ wants to murder him right now.

“Why?” Santino’s flat tone doesn’t change, though his look shifts to one of carefully studied distance.

“Thinking of getting some air.” Preferably before he murders Santino and Flora.

Santino turns away, apparently already done with this conversation. “We need you for the charity event later in case the Sicilians get snarky.”

Of course this is the day he decides to dig his heels in. “That’s at six tonight.”

Santino doesn’t look up from whatever the hell he’s studying in the paper. John is thoroughly tempted to heave his mug at him. “We can’t afford to be waiting around for you.”

John lets out a long sigh, reminds himself this isn’t the hill that’s worth murdering Santino on, takes his coffee, and leaves the kitchen to retreat back to the relative safety of his own room.

Of course it’s not that easy to escape. “Hey.” Flora trots up and in front of him, forcing him to stop walking away from her. The second-to-last person John wants to see right now. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Bull.” Flora looks him up and down. “You’re on edge.”

“ _Waking up at ass o’clock in the morning to a murder scream will do that to you_ ,” John snarls, his voice twenty shades of brutal murder loud enough that the kitchen absolutely heard him. And when Flora takes a full step back and the kitchen falls dead silent, he comes back down to himself and yanks his calm back into place. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Flora frowns at him with a frightening amount of concern. “We didn’t mean to upset you.”

In translation: _Sameen and Ares are annoyed. You’re not annoyed_.

“I don’t react well to being startled awake.” The understatement of the century. John utters a mental prayer to anything listening that the household won’t have to find out what that actually means.

“I got that sense.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Flora looks offended that he tried.

“This about to be a daily occurrence?” John says through his teeth. “Because if so I’ll take my chances with the zoo in the outbuildings.”

“No. Promise.”

“I’m not kidding, Flora.”

“I swear to God, and you know how much I hate giving God anything.” At John’s look, Flora holds up her hands. “It won’t. I’ll make sure Santino doesn’t do that anymore.” John’s face must say something like _you sure he won’t do it just to spite me_? because Flora curls her lip at the kitchen. “It’s enough of a fucking production to get her in the ballroom as it is. He didn’t even want to do that kind of training with her, so trust me, he won’t need much convincing. And I swear to God I will personally help you murder him if he’s a spiteful shit about it.”

She’s not going to have enough time to help him murder Santino if this happens again, though he doesn’t tell her that. “Thanks.” John starts to step around her, ready to beat a hasty retreat before Flora decides to push, but Flora’s fingers rest lightly on his arm.

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

John casts his eyes in the direction of the kitchen.

Flora gives him a look like he’s a moron. “I mean, I’m not thrilled with you about that either, but the fact still stands. You can talk to me. If you need. If you want.”

He hears the echo of Marcus’s voice, _Anytime you need. Just…just call me back, okay?_ and pushes it away. “Pretty sure I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Flora’s face is gentle. John quells the urge to run away. “Well, if you want to pick somewhere to try, let me know. Or if you just want to shoot something.”

“Thanks, Flora.”

“Sure.” She makes a shooing motion. “Go. I’ll prevail on my asshole brother to let you get some air until the charity thing later.”

He doesn’t believe her, but he still hears Flora behind him as he reaches the top of the stairs storming into the kitchen to yell at Santino in Russian, which no one else in the room speaks except Caroline. John makes his way to his room faster with the sound of Santino’s clipped Russian at his back and closes the door behind him so he doesn’t have to hear it. He doesn’t go back in the dark of the closet, because he’d like to pretend he has any dignity left at all, but he does lock the door, draw the curtains, and sit on the floor near the bookshelf, out of view of the camera and the windows where he can still see someone coming through the panel without getting boxed in.

Thirty minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. “John? You in there?”

“What do you want, Flora?” He answers in Russian, because while he didn’t hear anyone else in the hallway with her, he’d rather not take the chance, and in any case, one of the boys is always watching the camera feeds in the basement, and exactly two of the boys speak Russian, so he’s willing to bet on those odds.

“Open up?”

She answers in Russian, at least, but he still likes the look of the door locked with other people trapped on the other side of it, and he can reach five weapons easily from where he’s sitting.

Flora sighs. “Look, you can tell me to fuck off and I’ll fuck off, but I figured you might want breakfast. And Santino agreed to give you some air.”

He doesn’t really want breakfast, but he also just got an out he wasn’t expecting to receive, so he stands quietly, sets his coffee on the bookshelf, and unlocks the door.

Sure enough, there’s Flora, holding up a plate of food in apology. “I got him to agree to let you leave and be back by three. There’s only so far I could argue with him about the benefits of having you there and aware of the lay of the land in case the Sicilians get snarky.”

He takes the plate, mostly as a gesture of thanks given that he has no intention of eating it. “Thanks, Flora.”

She shakes her head. “It’s the least I can do.” She inclines her head in the direction of his closet as if she already knows he’s not going to touch the food. “Go. Get some air. I’ll make sure no one calls you unless the zombie apocalypse breaks out on the front lawn.”

John feels a bit bad about leaving the food on the desk, but he’s not in any mood to set foot in the kitchen again either, so he texts Helen while he gets dressed asking if she’s free, and when she says yes, he tells her he’ll be free until about two and asks if he can take her up on the rain check he took yesterday to hole up in her apartment for a bit, relieved when she says yes. He knows, because he checks himself over in the bedroom mirror, that he’s not masking any better than he was yesterday, but he’s in no mood to deal with people in the city and he’s certainly not about to hide in his room on the floor all day. So he ducks out without meeting anyone’s eye, ignoring the boys when they call out to start a conversation, and takes a set of car keys to drive.

He knows as soon as Helen opens the door that an hour of driving hasn’t helped him mask any better. “You look like you’ve had a rough morning.”

 _My boss and his sister woke up his little sister by standing over her with a knife and I woke up to her screaming bloody murder and almost murdered someone who wasn’t there_. “Woke up to the boss’s sister cussing him out.”

“Yeah that would do it.” Helen pulls the door open wider and gestures for him to come in. “I can promise there’s no cussing out here. Unless the TV plots get creative, which isn’t a high risk.”

He laughs and steps inside, grateful for the normalcy of stepping into a cramped apartment to the sound of the TV. It’s the most obvious sign of all that he’s stepped outside of the house’s parallel universe where modernity only shows up in small, controlled bursts borne of sheer necessity: Santino’s smartphone here or Cosima’s laptop there or Bedelia’s computer in her office in the basement or the boys’ comms in their ears or the cameras everywhere, regulated by Faraday bags and Tor proxies and TAILS and activity monitoring software and keystroke logs and Caroline’s all-consuming paranoia. “What do you have on?”

“Some random soap opera, I think.” Whatever it is, it’s terribly written and soothing for it. “Have you eaten? I wasn’t sure if you had and wasn’t quite sure when you’d get here, so.”

The kitchen carries the early signs of a weekend breakfast. “I could be convinced to pick at something.” Unlikely, but he doesn’t want her to feel bad. “Need a hand?”

Helen is a disaster of a cook who uses a utensil once and promptly forgets it, only to make a mess searching for it and pull out a new one to replace it, so John sets to picking up the discarded utensils and bowls and washing them after she forgets them.

It’s a pleasant system, and it’s easy enough to keep Helen in his line of sight when he’s picking up utensils in her trail. She can’t make any sudden movements just beyond his line of vision when he’s looking right at her, waiting for when she inevitably sets something aside and forgets it. It’s also easy enough to pass off his slow progress through the dishes he collects as distraction while looking at her, because that’s more endearing than saying he doesn’t want to turn his back to her and, in any case, Helen’s steady progress through half the utensils in her kitchen is endearing in itself.

It’s pleasant. It’s soothing. It’s normal. Enough so that when Helen goes to set out breakfast in the living room so they can curl up on the couch, John lets himself turn the water on and turn his attention to the dishes. It’s one of the limited number of oddball chores he’s still able to do at the house on occasion, and he’s always liked the banal domesticity of it. He can’t quite hear Helen between the running water and the sound of the TV, but he’s fairly sure he can place her somewhere near the TV, well away from the kitchen doorway, so he lets himself sink into the rhythm of washing and running water, keeping his eyes on the dishes and not focused on the edges of his vision.

Which is of course the moment Helen speaks up from three feet away in the kitchen doorway. “You ready?”

John does not fly a foot in the air. He grips the edge of the counter hard enough to crack his knuckles to make sure he doesn’t fly at Helen, the soapy silverware clattering loudly into the sink where he flings them to get them out of his hands.

“Sorry,” she says as he gulps down air, one hand reaching out for him as she takes a step. “I didn’t mean to—”

“ _Stay over there_ ,” John grits out through his teeth, taking long breaths through his nose, chanting over and over again that he’s not in danger here.

The hand falters and drops. “John? You okay?”

“Please just go back to the living room,” John says, squeezing his eyes shut so he can’t catalogue items in reach with which to inflict harm as if his brain hasn’t already catalogued everything in the kitchen, his grip on the counter hard enough for his hands to shake, because Helen staying over there suddenly doesn’t feel far enough away. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

It takes a second, but he hears Helen’s footsteps retreating. That probably made things worse, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about springing at her anymore.

This has never been an issue with Helen before, an organic byproduct of the fact that John never stays the night. It’s never been an issue with Santino either, also an organic byproduct of the fact that they don’t usually sleep together in the same bed, and when they do, Santino uses a gradual light alarm Caroline made for him and is not about to bounce out of bed after John spends time in it anyway, and also, no one in the house wants to walk in on the morning after. It’s the same reason he’s never stayed the night with anyone he slept with in the last seven years—it’s hard for him to pretend that he’s a normal guy if they startle him awake.

Of course, Helen didn’t startle him awake, and startling him when he’s already awake isn’t usually enough to provoke that kind of a reaction, not unless he’s already on alert. Or he was startled awake without a direct outlet for the adrenaline rush. Sadly, both of those things happened this morning after he spent a week on alert, and also, Santino and Flora and Gianna’s casualness is still grating the back of his brain.

It takes longer than it should if he wants to salvage this, assuming there’s anything left to salvage, but after several minutes he manages to get his heart rate down from Mach 1 and lower the pulse of adrenaline in his ears to at least contemplate what the hell he’s going to say. Sadly, absent a job to do and with only exhaustion left in the wake of the adrenaline slowly bleeding out of his system, his brain has left the building and took his problem-solving capacity with it. Also what little masking he had left, but there’s no chance he can do mental ballet when he doesn’t have a spare neuron to form words. So John resigns himself to passing this off as tiredness as best he can, marshals his nonexistent mental resources, and steps into the living room. The look on Helen’s face says that looked worse than he hoped and his face isn’t making it any better.

“Sorry about that,” he says in a tone that he hopes is light but definitely isn’t.

“No, I’m sorry,” Helen says, still studying him. He has no idea what she sees, but it clearly isn’t comforting her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about.”

Helen sets her fork down, wearing the frown she gets occasionally when she’s trying to figure him out. “John, you looked like you were terrified of me.”

He wasn’t terrified of Helen. He was terrified of hurting her. “You just startled me. It happens.”

It’s the wrong response. “That wasn’t—”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” It’s an even worse response, but he can’t come up with a good lie, which means he needs this to end before it turns into a proper conversation.

“John—”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he snaps. “So can we please not talk about this?”

That wins him silence and pressed lips, then, finally, “Okay.”

It takes a second to figure out why Helen is sitting so still, and when he does, he sighs. “You don’t have to tiptoe. I’m fine.”

Helen lets out a long breath. “Okay.”

It never recovers after that. They’re both trying, but John doesn’t have enough brainpower left to make Helen feel comfortable, just enough to know that he’s sailing past social cues and responding all wrong, and sitting in a room without just John, Helen is at a loss for what to do. John makes up a reason to get out of her hair after they eat, for which Helen is relieved.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly as he steps into the hall, still holding himself at a distance because he doesn’t trust his hands again now that he’s in motion.

“Don’t be.” Helen gives him a small, stiff smile. “You’re having a rough morning. I’ll talk to you later.” Then the door clicks shut, and John is once more on his own.

He sits in the car without turning it on for a solid ten minutes, trying to figure out where the hell else to go and just staring blankly at the steering wheel instead. Eventually he sighs and puts the keys in the ignition, because there’s no use pretending he’s going to go anywhere else.

He doesn’t meet Athos’ and Giacomo’s eyes as they let him through the front gate, nor does he answer Anthony’s greeting when he pulls the car back into the garage where it belongs and hangs the keys on the nail where they belong and steps quietly out to let the gravel crunch under his footfalls as he makes his way back to where he belongs.

Santino is in the library when he steps through the front door, on the phone with someone in Sicilian. By the fact that it sounds like an actual conversation, it’s not Vincenzo (Vincenzo usually involves a lot of repeated phrases in a tone of rising irritation, translating something to the effect of _stay the fucking course_ ). By the tone, it’s Barzini, who calls almost every other day—somehow, and John’s not sure how, Barzini has proven himself to be Santino’s most stable ally in New York over the last month, functionally in Vito’s usual caretaker/referee role given that Michael can’t seem to help himself and Santino at the same time. By Santino’s sigh, the Tattaglias have gotten more audacious, and he catches the word _Stracci_ , so the limpets must have decided to see what they could get away with. John should probably care about that, insofar as it’s probably relevant to whether or not he takes a work trip to New York in the foreseeable future—his own name invariably comes up in Barzini’s phone conversations, asking Santino to send John back to help keep the peace. John’s become increasingly familiar with the Sicilian for _no_ and _fuck off_.

He should probably care about that. But right about now he can only think as far ahead as the next ten seconds and everything after that is darkness and possibly dragons. So he climbs the stairs, because while he could get air and it is a warm summer day, he doesn’t want to risk the possibility of running into anyone.

He gets back to his room and locks the door, though he doesn’t sit in front of the bathroom again. He sits on the floor with his back against the wall between the two windows, staring at a fixed point on the wall above the bed. The camera in the clock can see him, but he can’t find it in him to care as long as no one bothers him.

He’s distantly aware of the sun moving, insofar as the light on the floor from the windows shifts. He ignores Doria when she calls to him from the hall asking if he wants lunch, and after a few minutes she goes away.

Eventually, there’s another knock on the door. Flora, speaking Russian and asking him to rejoin the living. A glance at the clock shows it to be three p.m. So he stands, his back and legs making their outrage known, his mouth horrifically chalky and his head radiating pain.

He suspects one of the boys must have said something to Flora, because she offers a glass of water and some of his specialized painkillers as soon as he opens the door, both of which he downs gratefully.

“Come on,” she says in Italian, nodding down the hall. “I need to show you the blueprints and the plan before we eat and get ready.”

Perhaps because she’s still feeling guilty, she takes him to her own bedroom next to the study instead of the kitchen or the basement where Ares and Sameen are undoubtedly getting the boys ready. She drops to sit on the floor in front of the small coffee table nods to the small sofa across from her, where his back is to a wall and he’s out of view of the window and he has a clear line to the door. There’s an oddball assortment of food there, along with blueprints and notes. And while Flora’s room is full of red and populated by Flora’s collection of skulls, he takes the olive branch for what it is and picks at the food as Flora explains what they’re dealing with.

She does make him eat dinner before they leave, though she’s nice enough to let him eat it upstairs instead of with everyone else, then shoos him off with a case full of guns and a garment bag to his own room to get ready.

He somehow finds himself herded into the same car as Santino, though Flora’s nice enough to put him in the driver’s seat with Ares, which means he has to focus on driving and doesn’t need to talk to her. It doesn’t spare him Gianna going back and forth with Santino in the back seat, but at least he doesn’t need to look at Santino.

There’s no use pretending he hasn’t noticed Santino in his suit once they make it to the party, though, because the rest of the room has. Including the occasional man who ambles up to him amidst the people cycling through to vie for his attention so that they can vie for a different kind of attention from him. John stays in Santino’s periphery for a little while, but after the second one, he drifts a little further away.

Which is, of course, the moment the third-to-last person he wants to see casually cycles through the room to settle against the wall a foot away from him, Cassian and the Israelis fanning out at a casual distance.

“I’m sorry,” Gianna says. “About earlier.”

“It’s fine.” It’s not fine, but he really doesn’t want to invite a conversation about it, so he turns his attention back to where Santino is chatting with a guy clearly angling to hit on him, Gianna following his gaze.

“John,” Gianna says gently. “You don’t have to pretend. Not with me, anyway.”

“I’m not pretending.” He counts in his head the stories she might know, the relative probability of her knowing about the tattoo on his back. Because the real answer is _I’m not pretending well and I really, really don’t want to talk about this._

“You’re not a very good liar, either.” Gianna’s face when he turns to meet her eye is surprisingly genuine.

He winds himself up to say that despite the locked doors and blackout curtains and the unholy screech Gianna let out this morning, _Red Room_ means something quite different to Gianna than it does to John so kindly _fuck right off_ , but Gianna beats him to it.

“You don’t like seeing Santino with other men.”

Ah. Right. That. The other thing John does not want to talk to her about ever in this lifetime. John gives her a look of reproach in the interest of not turning tail and running, because he doesn’t want to talk about this with Gianna but he has a reputation to keep.

“I mean, I can’t blame you.” She rolls her eyes. “Making you sit outside while he fucks around with boy-toys? It’s…” she trails off, seeming to search for the right word.

“Petty?” The word slips out before he can help it, even though he shouldn’t humor her. Even though he knows he shouldn’t admit it.

“I was going to say cruel, but yours works too.” She narrows her eyes at the room, raising her glass to her face. “Never mind that fresh bullshit he got you to agree to with men who are ‘business’.”

“Key word is agree, and also it’s none of your business.”

Gianna levels him a flat look. “Agreeing would imply Santino would have stopped sleeping with other men if you refused. Or that the agreement is at all fair to you.”

“You don’t know anything about that.”

“Don’t I?” Gianna says darkly. “There are plenty of ways he could hold them. He does that because he enjoys it. Same reason he’s throwing his fucking pretty boys in your face.”

“You don’t know anything about that,” John repeats, though he’s not sure for whose sake.

Gianna laughs quietly, though there’s no humor in it. “There it is.”

“What?”

“Deflection. Defending him.”

“I’m not. I’m saying it’s none of your business.”

“Business is the problem, isn’t it?”

“Stay out of it, Gianna,” John growls, letting just enough boogeyman seep through to let her know she actually needs to back up.

Gianna raises an eyebrow but makes a point of settling back against the wall, as if to show him she means no harm. “Just making conversation.”

“Make conversation with that art dealer,” Flora snaps, swooping in to drag Gianna across the room to talk with the aforementioned art dealer.

He still can’t place what about Gianna’s eyes are so deeply and disconcertingly familiar, even though he now sees them on a regular basis. All he can figure out is that Gianna is almost her brother, _almost_ being the operative word. There’s a universe of difference in _almost_.

Right about now, that’s a point in her favor.

Even so, John has no desire to continue a conversation with Gianna, so he makes his way back to loop around Santino's periphery, watching but half-listening as Santino charms the people who come and go to win favor from him. Ares keeps giving him a look, though. After an hour, when Santino is finally in a small bubble of space with champagne in his hand, he glances sideways as John approaches him, his working-the-room smile carefully affixed.

Still, he doesn’t really expect Santino to say anything to him, given that Santino adopted a minimal contact approach today. Meaning he hasn’t looked John’s way all day except when John asked to get air and once in the car when he thought John couldn’t see him. He’s still not looking at John, even with John a foot away, instead opting to study the room without really seeing it. It’s not Santino’s usual approach and also it feels like a punch to the gut for all that John legitimately contemplated murdering Santino this morning, but on the other hand, John doesn’t want to talk to Santino until he’s buried this morning in a hole he’ll never look into ever again.

So when Santino says quietly, “Did you get some air?” John is surprised.

He resists the urge to say _no thanks to you_ or better yet _fuck off_ because he doesn’t want to think about this morning anymore and certainly doesn’t want to get in a spat in a crowded room about it. So he says, “Yeah,” and hopes that will be enough to make Santino lose interest.

It’s not, because nothing in John’s life works out in his favor. “You weren’t gone long,” Santino replies, still studying the room.

“None of your damn business.”

“Things alright with Helen?”

“Still none of your damn business.”

Santino finally looks at him, and though his smile remains in place, his eyes are blank and closed off where only John can see them. "No, I suppose not." He sets down his champagne flute and makes his way to his box with Ares and Sameen at a close distance, flagging Flora and Caroline to follow with Gianna.

John still does not acknowledge the look Ares and Sameen give him, letting the sounds of the opera settle and grate against his ears wishing Rusalka would break into a proper scream to release some of the tension from his head.

Somehow, and John has no damn idea how, Santino manages to find one of another one of his damned pretty boys after the show is over. Out of spite, John suspects. And he makes sure John knows it by making him serve as the bodyguard in the sitting room, on the off-chance John went temporarily blind. The only small mercy is that he shipped Gianna back to the house and Flora and Caroline to their own homes, but it’s not mercy enough.

It doesn’t last long, because his damned pretty boy is unnerved by John out in the sitting room giving him a stare typically reserved for mass murder. And when the damned pretty boy catches a fucking clue and flees for his life, Santino emerges and bangs his way through the process of pouring a glass of wine. "Could you make an effort not to frighten them?"

Santino could give Ares this job. It would considerably soothe the men coming to his bed, given that Ares neither gives nor receives a single solitary fuck. But then, Santino has always been a vindictive bastard. "If they're afraid of all this then they have no business sleeping with you."

"They're not afraid of all this. They're afraid of you."

"They're not good enough."

Santino laughs like he's contemplating the merits of assault with a priceless vintage. "Haven't you noticed? I'm not a good man. No one is _good enough_." He says it with all the scorn of what being good enough would imply, like it's a sour taste in his mouth. At John's blank expression, Santino sets his glass down, his eyes bright with challenge. "Fine then. Who do you suggest, since you seem to be such an expert in the matter?"

John stares at him, offering no expression and no words.

“Get out,” Santino snarls, picking up his wine glass in threat. “I don’t want to see your face until morning.”

John gathers his guns and storms down the stairs, the rest of the security team fleeing when they see him coming. He spreads his cleaning cloth in the dining room and disassembles his guns, his back to the kitchen so he doesn’t have to see anyone, so he can pretend he doesn’t hear them.

At least until Flora drops into a chair next to him and says, “What the hell is your problem?”

John’s not sure when she got here. Possibly Sameen and Ares called her in the interest of avoiding a massacre. He continues taking his guns apart until Flora snatches one out of his hands and strips it.

“Seriously, what the hell is your problem?” That sentence is Russian, not Italian, reinforced by the murmur of, “What the hell?” behind them followed by the sound of an elbow digging into someone’s side.

“My problem?” John snaps back in Russian. Because while he doesn’t want to talk to Flora right now, he at least appreciates her giving him an out to talk with only Astrid and Mikkel knowing what they’re saying instead of the entire peanut gallery.

“Yes, your problem. Why do you have your head shoved so far up your ass and how much longer are you going to keep it there before I pry it out with a stick?”

“Take it up with him.”

“I’m not taking it up with him, I’m taking it up with you.”

“He’s the one bringing his damn boy toys here.”

One eyebrow raises. “I never claimed he’s not a petty bastard. But he’s being a petty bastard to spite you for avoiding him with Helen.”

“I noticed.” John sets his hands to stripping another gun, letting his irritation settle in the speed of his hands. “Because that’s healthy.”

“Never claimed he was healthy either.” When John shoots her a flat look, Flora sighs. “Come on, John. You’re not happy avoiding him, he’s not happy that you’re avoiding him, you both want you to stop avoiding him, so what’s the problem?”

“You were the one who suggested letting off steam with Helen. Having fun.” It trips off his tongue like a mouthful of acid. “Maybe I realized I’m happier there.”

“You’re full of shit.”

John gives her a frigid look over the bottle of gun oil. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“John.” Flora leans on the table to put her face directly in his eyeline. “I’ve seen all this shit before. Santino would have his fun with guys who were afraid of him and he’d spend all his time with his masks on, being who they needed him to be all the time so he didn’t upset them by being himself. And then he’d come back exhausted and fried and he couldn’t be around anybody for hours until his head reset.”

John is exhausted and fried, and he can feel it all the more once Flora says it. He cleans the gun in front of him with added vigor to stave it off, because he refuses to give Flora the satisfaction.

A hand reaches out and comes to rest on his forearm, holding him still. “You’re exhausted, and you’re not hitting reset, and you’re sure as shit not happy. It seemed like you were, after New York.”

“Yes.” It stings more than he hoped it would, admitting that.

“So…” Flora gestures to the air, to the second floor, “what’s the problem?”

“That’s the problem.”

“I’m confused.”

“I was happy. That’s the problem.”

“You never struck me as a masochist.”

John exhales, his hands stilling over his guns. He fixes his gaze on a spot on the floor, seeing the car crash into them. “All my focus was on him. And I didn’t see them coming.”

“They?”

“The Colombians.” The echoing screech of metal sounds in his memory. “I didn’t see them coming because I was focused on him. If I’m not putting all my focus on him, I can focus on keeping him alive and not having things like that happen.”

A beat of silence. Flora sits back in her chair, withdrawing her hand. John’s still staring at the spot on the floor, so he doesn’t see her coming when she hits him upside the head and snarls, “You’re a goddamn idiot.”

John whirls at her. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he registers the sound of security fleeing for the hills.

Flora glares right back at him uncowed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, John.”

“You were in the car with us.”

“Of course I was in the car with you. Which is how I can say with absolute certainty that it wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have seen them coming,” he snaps.

“You’re not invincible,” she snaps back. “And as I recall, you were the one who got us to the Continental unharmed. And the one who tore through the Colombians afterward.”

He feels the muscle memory of viciousness stirring in his chest and shoves it down into its cage. “It shouldn’t have happened. We shouldn’t have had to tear through the Colombians at all.”

“Get over yourself.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” he hisses. “I shouldn’t have had to get like that. He’s not safe around me like that.”

Flora stares at him in utter bafflement. “Safe?”

“Safe.” John nods at the stairs. “He’s safer like this. When days like that don’t happen. When I’m safe to be around.”

Flora looks like she’s offended on his behalf. “He’s safer around you than he is around anyone.”

“You’ve got a funny definition of the word.”

“Yes,” she says slowly, as if she can hammer it into him. “Because my definition of him being safe is him being sane and healthy and in one piece and feeling alive. All of which he is with you.”

“Not when I’m angry, he’s not.”

“You were angry in New York. And all you did in New York was work to keep him safe.”

“I wasn’t angry in New York,” John says flatly. “You were angry in New York.”

“I’m angry all the time,” Flora says just as flatly. “Do you think he’s unsafe with me?”

“No.”

“Then why is it different when it’s you?”

“Because you don’t know me when I’m angry. Trust me. He’s not safe with me when I’m angry.”

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” Flora mutters, switching back to Italian and marching around the dining room toward the stairs in the living room.

“Stay out of it, Flora,” he shouts at her back.

“Someone has to pull your heads out of your asses,” she shouts without looking back, taking the stairs two at a time.

Things end with Helen not long after that. Amazingly, it’s not because of any overt effort on Santino's part, but the reason Helen gives isn’t surprising.

"It's like you're always holding yourself in," she tells him, fiddling with her wine glass. “Like you’re always hiding behind a different version of yourself.”

John _is_ always holding himself in. She doesn't know how easily he could hurt her, doesn't know that she should be afraid of him, doesn’t know that the only reason she’s not afraid of him is because he’s hiding behind a different version of himself. He takes her hand, keeping his grip gentle, his muscles relaxed. "I'm sorry."

"It's not—" she exhales, shaking her head. "I don't want you to apologize, John. I just don't know why you don't think you can trust me."

"I do trust you."

She sets her glass down, removing her hand from his to fold her fingers together in front of her. "What are you thinking about right now?"

He's thinking something he often does when cornered, which is categorizing the ways he can kill someone using only what he has in arm's reach. He presses his lips together, quieting his mind and forcing himself to see nothing more than silverware.

"That's what I mean. It's like you're afraid something terrible is going to happen if you stop."

"Helen—"

"Please don't."

He closes his mouth.

"There it is again," she snaps. "You won't let yourself fight anything. You won't even let yourself argue."

Because fighting with her, actually fighting with her, makes it hard to be just John, and arguing is a dangerous proposition testing his ability to retain his calm while doing the mental ballet necessary to argue as just John. He thinks of fighting with Santino, of biting words and teeth rupturing skin and blood in the sheets and the hum of something feral in his bones, and pushes those thoughts away. "Do you want to fight?"

"No." Helen sighs. "I don't know you at all, and the only thing I can tell is that you're afraid to let me. And if you can't let yourself trust me..." she shrugs helplessly. "I don't really know what we're doing here, John."

He kisses her and leaves because he doesn’t really know what they're doing here either.

Santino seeks out new pretty boys over the next week, but John doesn’t scare them off. Not on purpose, anyway. Instead, he greets every new barb thrown his way with the same tired resignation, settling into the second-floor sitting room to strip his guns from the job of the day before Santino can even ask. He’s not sure what the pretty boys see when they look at him now. If he had to guess, something to the tune of pining or a jilted lover. Either way, the guns don’t reassure them, and they never stick around long, not meeting John’s eye when he ushers them out the front door.

When he comes back upstairs to finish cleaning his guns, he finds Santino leaning against the wall, watching him. “You’ve been quiet lately.”

“Nothing much to say,” he replies, settling back down on the couch. He only made it through stripping one gun, and so he sets to a different one, thinking it wasn’t so long ago that he would sit on the floor with Santino on the couch behind him, watching him work. The distance across the sitting room feels like an ocean.

“You haven’t asked for time off to visit Helen in the last week either,” Santino says, still studying him.

John could tell him to fuck off. He could lie. But he’s tired, and honestly, there’s no point in lying when Caroline has zero concept of personal boundaries. “She didn’t want to see me anymore.”

Silence.

John takes out the magazine and tosses it on the table with a loud clatter. “Well? Out with it.”

“What’s going on, John?”

“Nothing’s going on,” John replies, praying Santino stops asking before he has the terrible idea to stop pushing Santino away.

“You’ve been lying for weeks and you’re not very good at it,” Santino says evenly. “And you’re clearly not happy about it. So what’s going on here?”

John reminds himself of what Helen saw that morning to spook her off, reminds himself of the week that came before and the Colombians before that. “How many times do I need to repeat that nothing is going on before you actually believe me?”

“When you actually mean it. What’s going on?”

“What happened with Helen is none of your damn business,” John growls.

“If she was stupid enough to tell you she doesn’t want to see you anymore, that’s her fucking loss. I could not factually give less of a fuck about Helen.” Santino tilts his head, still studying him. “But I’m at a loss for what the fuck’s happening here. I thought maybe this was all to do with her. But she’s gone and you’re still pushing me away and I don’t know why you insist on running when you clearly don’t want to.”

“So now that she’s gone I’m just supposed to run back to you?” John strips a gun and sets the parts down on the table with far more force than necessary. “Because I never really had any other choice, did I? You want me, so you’re going to have me.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“Isn’t it? Out of curiosity,” John says, before he can think better of the cruelty of what he’s saying beyond the fact of trying to make Santino shove him away, “was it ever about actually wanting me, or did you just not want anyone else to have me?”

“You know that’s not true.”

In an agreeable and rational mood, sure. In theory. But John’s mood is neither agreeable nor rational, and the difference between the two doesn’t matter given that he’s trying to make Santino shove him away. “I know you’re a possessive bastard.”

“Of course I’m a possessive bastard,” Santino snaps, his eyes flashing. “I would have to be the biggest idiot in the world to consider giving you up.”

John laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “There it is.”

“Stop twisting what I’m saying.”

“You do it all the time,” John replies, no longer even pretending to fight with the small pieces of his gun. “And it sounds an awful lot like you’re saying I’m another one of your damn art pieces.”

“That isn’t what I said and you know it.”

“Then enlighten me,” John says, in a tone pitched like a backhand to the face, “because I seem to be behind the curve.”

“If she willingly gave you up then she’s even stupider than that idiot Tarasov.”

John’s not sure what he expected, but that wasn’t it. “What the fuck does Viggo have to do with anything?”

“She didn’t have the first fucking clue what was in front of her any more than he did.” Santino’s eyes narrow. “No more than anyone else who’s so fucking afraid of you they won’t let themselves see you.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” John replies, turning back to cleaning his gun. “Maybe it’s better that way.”

“Better?” Santino lets out an incredulous laugh. “ _Better_?”

“Better.”

“You’re just going to let their fear be a cage?”

John tosses the gun down to glare back at Santino, his voice rising to match Santino’s. “Maybe that’s where I belong.”

“So that’s it, then? You’re just going to sleepwalk through your life like you were when I found you in New York?”

“I was safe in New York.”

“You were asleep in New York.” Santino looks him up and down. “Not even asleep. You were comatose.”

“Because you know so damn much about me.”

“I don’t know everything about you, but I know you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Really?” Santino pushes his way into John’s space, leaning down dangerously close, sparks flying in his eyes. “I saw you quite clearly after the Colombians. Just like I saw you in New York. And what I see is that you’re so bound and determined to let other people’s fear of you be a noose around your neck that you’re willing to let your life slip by on autopilot.”

“If other people are safe around me with the noose, then so be it.”

Santino steps back, a mocking laugh already slipping out. “You fucking _coward_.”

“One of us needs to be,” John snaps. “And you don’t have enough goddamn sense to be afraid of me.”

“I don’t need to be afraid of you.”

A growl slips out before he can help it, and he scrubs his fingers into his eyes, as if not seeing Santino is a deterrent to getting pissed off at him. “Yes, you really do.”

“How many times have I told you I’m not a good man?” Santino says coolly. “Don’t put me on a pedestal.”

 _“I don’t want to hurt you_.” It comes out as a roar, his fingers scraping when he yanks them down from his eyes. “What about that is so difficult for you to understand?”

Santino laughs in his face. “You hurt me all the time.”

“If you honestly think that’s true, you don’t know the first fucking thing about me.”

“I’m not made of glass. And despite what you seem to think, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time before you showed up. I can hold my own, and I can certainly handle you and what you’re so fucking afraid of.”

John shoots across the room to pin Santino against the bookcase with a crash, one forearm coming up to trap him as John leans to hiss in his face. “You think how your father died means you can hold your own? You think that shit in the ballroom means you can handle it? You think Massima teaching you since you were four means you’re fucking Red Room?” John laughs, an awful, ugly sound like the burning of the ink in his back. “ _Burn. In. Hell._ You don’t know anything about being hurt.”

“If you honestly think I don’t know anything about being hurt,” Santino’s voice is low and cold and utterly dead, “then you don’t know the first fucking thing about me.”

John lets out an exhale that feels like a knife twisting in his chest, stepping back and dropping his arm down. Even though the damage is already done. “I’m sorry. But I’m not going to do this.”

“Yeah,” Santino says quietly. John can feel his eyes on his back as he walks down the hall, away from Santino, toward his own bedroom. He doesn’t let himself pause until he’s out of sight in his own door frame, though he does pause just before closing the door, looking across the hall to the art above Santino’s bed in the master bedroom.

Albrecht Durer’s _Study of the Hands of an Apostle_ hang above Santino’s bed in the position most people would hang a crucifix, the same hands inked into the skin between John’s shoulders over a cross. Santino thought it was hilarious the first time he got a proper look at the hands on John’s back. John thought it was hilarious the first time he got a proper look at the art hanging above Santino’s bed in the apartment. But it doesn’t feel so funny anymore, seeing it from the hallway as he keeps on walking away from Santino. It feels like another stamp of possession.

He should want to leave. He should want to shake that stamp off. But he can’t fathom where he would rather be any more than the sketch could fathom stepping off the nail holding it to the wall to invite itself to hang on someone else’s wall. He wouldn’t even know where to start.

So he looks down from the sketch and closes his bedroom door without turning the light on and sits on the floor hidden in the dark, in his quiet black box alone where he’s made sure the one person he wants to come looking for him won’t bother trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First the good news: we survived! The other good news: the ship will sail. But they have to go through the ringer first. Also! I'm back with a letter of a post-chapter note. 
> 
> Oh, come on. You totally knew Giovanni murdered Massima, right? Also, Doria's tougher than her little Italian grandma facade lets on. Remember, she's an old woman who Santino's grandfather hired at the age of thirteen. This is not a business where people get old. She did not survive to old age by dumb luck. 
> 
> What John describes as mental ballet is my closest approximation to the experiences of the woman whose interview in The Cut influenced my characterization of Santino as a psychopath (https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/my-life-as-a-psychopath.html). As she describes it, she has to constantly monitor other people and her own responses to understand what kind of response is expected based on someone's behavior. She can understand that other people feel these things, but she doesn't. Emotional response is a cognitive calculation, which is not to say that she doesn't feel emotion, just that it's way turned down compared to other people. That's why she has to constantly gauge other people--psychopaths learn that they have to mask at a young age, because if they respond in a way that feels natural to them, it's deeply disquieting to other people because there's an emotional depth that's profoundly absent, a level of engagement that people need that fundamentally isn't there. John and Santino don't have to mask around each other because their natural responses match, but John responding to Helen the same way (where basically she could say, "My mother just died," and he would respond with a flat, "Okay,") is extremely unsettling. But canon John is not shown to be an emotional person so much as a dark well, rather than someone like Santino who can mask so well that no one would ever know. He's somewhere between Caroline and Santino, more toward Caroline's end of things. 
> 
> I know a lot of writers cast John as having a military background because of Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat. I don't, because that phrase isn't affiliated with any American military branch and John isn't the type to get tattoos carelessly. I have a different context for it. You'll get it later. But it struck me when looking at John and Helen's house that there aren't any photos that imply history. John doesn't seem to exist until he married Helen, but the way he loves Helen says to me that he's the kind of person who would keep small symbols of people he cared for if he had them. So the fact that he doesn't seem to have any history to me says that he didn't have anyone to record one for him. No one to hold onto. 
> 
> Hey look, Marcus! He's a fascinating character for how little he shows up in the first movie. We're not done with him yet. 
> 
> Hey look, Gianna finally showed up! Not that anyone's better off for it. In case you’re curious, the painting in her bedroom is “Compromised” by Walton Ford. 
> 
> Congratulations for those of you paying attention who noticed that the equipment listed in the ballroom is not ballet equipment at all but gymnastics equipment. That’s not accidental. 
> 
> Yes, that is in fact the Marvel Red Room, though not quite the same as the Black Widow program. Suffice to say that while I have faith that John is naturally talented, that level of skill and unshakeability in a crisis and adaptability under duress reads as highly trained to me. The Red Room here is the training ground for the bratva's greatest killers, but as you can see, making their pet monsters leaves a lot of damage in its wake. We'll spend more time unraveling what that means. Mind you, the trouble with publishing this before the whole thing is finished is I realize things that previous chapters might play hard and fast with, so forgive me while I make this all look deliberate. 
> 
> Hey look ma, I finally explained why John is a canonical art lover! I looked at a lot of Russian gang tattoos, but as it turns out, the praying hands aren't any symbol that I could find. They are, however, a perfect replica of Albrecht Durer's "Study of the Hands of an Apostle", which is considered one of the finest examples of white highlighting with black ink on blue paper. Again, John doesn't strike me as the type to get tattoos carelessly, and while that sketch is famous, it's not the Mona Lisa (i.e. not a casual art lover thing). Ergo, my canonical evidence John Wick is a fan of fine art. Fight me.


	12. you took my heart and held it in your mouth (and all of me came rushing out)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A contract on Santino's head brings a merciful end to the string of pretty boys and brings everyone to Florence. John thinks they're getting a lecture on Dante and a remarkably reckless bit of theatrics. What they actually get is a debate on the nature of monstrosity, a full-fledged scene that the art donors of Florence didn't know they were getting, creative definitions of murder, and the discovery that John's timing for necessary revelations is astonishingly terrible. John's not as upset by this as he thought he'd be. 
> 
> Or: the one where Bedelia is first mate of the ship, Sameen and Ares have way too much fun with this, and John and Santino should come with their own health warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to leave two weeks between chapters, but the last chapter is one of the ones that make me sad, and I don't want you to be sad with me, so I'm giving you the gift of a mini-vacation to Florence. With attempted murder and rich people's concerning taste in art and psychopathic disaster gays making a scene. And then a full fucking production. And then a private show. 
> 
> *sings* What can I say except you're welcome?

It's almost a relief when someone takes a hit out on Santino a few days later, bringing a merciful end to the string of pretty boys.

It happens from time to time and has yet to work, but it always means he has to tighten his circle, and thus no more casual fucks until Accounts Receivable indicates the contract is closed. It’s honestly the best news John’s heard all month, aside from the fact that he now wants to empty an entire clip apiece into the heads of everyone involved. 

Santino is irritated by the hit, but he’s even more irritated by the involvement of one of his associates in San Lorenzo, Damien Moreau. Not so much that he had the gall to open a contract (Santino _was_ about to become a thorn in his side for his sloppiness with gun shipments in Belgrade) so much as the fact that he had the gall to volunteer his favorite dog (Eliot Spencer) for the job, because Eliot Spencer is a man of talent (which means there’s a vague yet menacing possibility that the hit will be a pain in the ass). Santino contemplated poaching him but wasn't particularly motivated to irritate Moreau, helped by the fact that Spencer wasn't particularly motivated to be poached. He may yet regret that decision, depending on how much Spencer irritates him until the contract is closed.

John always liked Eliot Spencer. Less so now that he has to skin him alive for attempting to assassinate Santino, but still. The man always had an impeccable sense of timing.

In any case, they’ll be in Florence for a few days to deal with this mess—Santino has an inherited collection of historical torture devices going on loan to the Palazzo Vecchio for a lecture series on Dante’s _Inferno_ and medieval concepts of the body and suffering _,_ titled Atrocious Torture Instruments in a fit of originality. A professor on loan from Oxford, Dr. Ezra Fell, is opening the exhibit with a lecture to the Studiolo and invited Santino to attend as an old friend, and Santino is of a mind to take him up on it, since it’s an ideal excuse to make Spencer burn his one opportunity in an extremely limited window before Santino leaves to be a thorn in Moreau’s side in San Lorenzo. A one-night window, actually, since the Studiolo lecture is the night before Santino leaves for San Lorenzo. And so they’ll depart a few days early, accompanying Bedelia to oversee the last few shipments of items on loan so Bedelia has time to help the Palazzo Vecchio curator finish setting up the exhibit, and more importantly enough time to light a neon sign above Florence to make sure Spencer goes there instead of trying to hunt Santino down in Rome.

“How do you know he won’t kill you when we land anyway?” John asks once Santino finishes laying out this harebrained bullshit in the living room.

“Because he didn’t want to do it in the first place,” Caroline says over Skype on Santino’s laptop. She snatched Gianna to join her on a business trip to London the day after things fell apart with Helen. Theoretically to teach Gianna about the business. Given that Gianna did not inherit the D’Antonio gift for numbers and, as a consequence, has neither the talent nor the training to understand what her brother or Caroline do at the hedge fund, it’s unclear what about business Caroline could be teaching her. John can only assume it includes the finer points of making someone so nervous their accent jumps two tax brackets. Either way, he’s grateful for Caroline’s convenient timing.

As for the finer points of Eliot Spencer’s timing, well. “Wanted it enough to take the contract.”

“No,” Caroline says as though he’s an idiot, which is par for the course, “he only took the contract because Moreau forced his hand. Moreau has a blank term Marker on him.”

Assuming he doesn’t wring Spencer’s neck for trying to kill Santino, they’re going to have a lengthy discussion about why in the ever-loving fuck Eliot was idiotic enough to give anyone on the planet Earth a blank term Marker and a still longer conversation about the stunning idiocy of giving a blank term Marker to Damien Moreau. For now, he settles for, “Why the fuck is he going around giving a blank term Marker?”

“A migraine for another day,” Caroline mutters, with an expression that says she’s contemplating how to turn Spencer’s bones into a Marker and murder Damien Moreau with it.

 _He doesn’t actually think this will work, does he_? Ares signs, leaning into view of the computer.

Flora’s the one who answers, though. “Damien was always an arrogant shit. Besides,” her grin turns on John, “he’s counting on that one time Eliot got you at a draw in Bahrain as evidence that Eliot might actually be able to beat you if he’s smart about it.”

The boys gape. Sameen leans back in her chair to gawk from a better angle. “How the fuck did Eliot Spencer get you at a draw?”

“I was having an off day.” John shrugs. “We weren’t even supposed to run into each other. He was there for a retrieval contract and got in my way.”

Flora gives him a look. She’d probably think this is fucking hilarious if not for the distant yet menacing possibility that Eliot Spencer might stand a fighting chance against Baba Yaga. “You morons blew up a building.”

“Like I said, he got in the way. I would have been in and out if his dumb ass hadn’t gotten noticed. Next thing I know I’m fighting through an entire building worth of security. By the time I got my target, he was already there and thought I was there for him. Got a lucky swing at my knee after one of the security guys fucked it up.”

“Didn’t he burn your arm all to shit?”

Assuming John doesn’t murder Eliot Spencer for attempting to murder Santino or giving a blank term Marker to Damien Moreau, they’re going to have a long conversation about what fresh bullshit he’s spinning about his previous interactions with Baba Yaga. “Yeah, sure.” He rolls up his left sleeve and taps a faded burn scar there the length and width of two fingers. “A mortal wound.” He rolls his eyes as he pulls his sleeve back down. “He shoved me sideways into some gasoline barrels. My arm clipped a steam pipe on the way down while I was shooting at him. He already had what he came for and bolted.”

“He blew up the building with you in it.”

“No, I blew up the building on my way out of it.” John rolls his eyes. “He was there for a monkey, not a hit. He didn’t have anything on him and he wasn’t sticking around to chat. I threw an incendiary grenade at the machinery to ignite the gasoline on the way out.”

“The fuck did you bring an incendiary grenade to a hit for?”

“I was in Bahrain for a hit. And Viggo wanted to make a mess.” John shrugs. “So I made a mess.”

Matteo looks somewhere between terrified and fascinated. “The fuck kind of monkey was he there for?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“If you’ve quite finished posturing,” Santino says coolly, “I’d rather like to finish ironing out how to prevent Mr. Spencer from murdering me.”

John raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “And if you’d like to stop posturing to Damien Moreau, I can go to San Lorenzo and actually stop Spencer from murdering you.”

“Much though I love hearing you two argue,” Caroline says in a tone of exhausted annoyance, “I have to babysit your kid sister and her new boy toy.”

 _He’s an Englishman named Matthew Brown, for fuck’s sake_ , Ares signs. _He’s a finance grunt. It shouldn’t be humanly possible for someone that squeaky clean to be irritating_.

“And yet, Gianna.” Caroline rolls her eyes hard enough to cause permanent injury. “Stay safe, Santino.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Santino replies, Caroline giving him a flat look as he hangs up.

“We are not going through with this bullshit plan,” John tells him, not that his opinion matters.

“ _We_ certainly are,” Santino replies coolly, gesturing to the rest of the room. “ _You_ are welcome to stay behind if you find Florence so objectionable.”

“Bite me.”

John does go along with the bullshit plan. Or at least, he takes the car keys to drive to Florence, just in case Spencer somehow slipped out of San Lorenzo and into Rome without Flora or Caroline noticing. His other options are to drive ten hours south to Palermo with Matteo, Constantine, and Valentine to stake out the clusterfuck that’s been unfolding over the last few weeks with Santino’s cousin Bianca (not going to happen) or stay behind in the house (sure as shit not going to happen). His only consolation is that Flora is just as annoyed by this as he is. Then again, she and Santino have been bitching about Bianca’s clusterfuck of a breakup for weeks.

Santino spends the entire car ride to Florence on the phone, first with Vito and Michael, then with Vincenzo, then spends the remaining thirty minutes reassuring the Palermo police commissioner that he’s aware of the issue and will be visiting in the next week to resolve it. Which is to say he’s irritated by the time they check into the Continentale di Firenze and still more irritated when they step into the suite he’ll be stuck in for days until the Studiolo lecture to draw Spencer out.

So when the phone rings again and Santino picks up without looking and snaps, “What?” in a tone of _fuck off before I take your fucking head off_ , John prepares himself to stop Santino from grabbing one of his guns and shooting the phone. The last thing they need is to move suites because Continentale security broke down the door.

Santino doesn’t grab a gun, though. Instead, he stops short in the doorway, closes his eyes, and sighs the longest breath he’s taken all week. Then he puts the phone on speaker and says in a dead voice, “You’re on speaker. Don’t say anything that will annoy John enough to shoot the phone,” as he drops to sit on the couch.

The man on the other end of the line sighs. “I had rather hoped to have a word in private, Santino.”

And then John stops short, Lorenzo running into his back. He’s not sure who he expected, but it wasn’t Emilio Barzini. He didn’t even know Barzini had Santino’s cell phone number. He steps out of the way only to find Lorenzo looking at the phone like he might shoot it if John doesn’t, regardless of whether Barzini is unusually annoying.

“Yes, well, you know what they say about wanting,” Santino replies.

“What?”

Santino casts an irritated look at the boys, who make a show of being busy as though they aren’t all listening. “That you can want in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.”

“How crass.”

“I’m busy, Emilio. Either tell me what you want or go annoy someone else.”

Barzini sighs again, but when he speaks, his business voice is finally in place. “I thought you ought to know that the Tattaglias and Straccis are turning an eye toward acquisition.”

It sounds like the same old shit Barzini calls about every other day at the house, and Santino’s face says as much. “Your concern is touching, but the Corleones are quite capable of managing their own interests.”

Barzini snorts. “Michael Corleone’s current performance with his father’s holdings says otherwise, but the Corleones aren’t my concern. They’re turning an eye toward your holdings in New York.”

“I can manage my own holdings. If you have concerns about an open insurrection, call Vincenzo.”

“Let’s stop pretending for a moment that I actually answer to Vincenzo, shall we?”

“You can pretend all you like, but you’re not Camorra.” Santino gives the phone an emotionless stare. “So I don’t know why you’re calling me.”

“To offer to help,” Barzini says. “If you’d like me to.” Which is when John realizes Santino is testing the waters.

“Why the fuck would you help me?”

“For one, because the newly anointed Don Corleone seems incapable of helping himself, never mind you, and for another, I have a vested interest in keeping you on the throne of the Cosa Nostra where you belong.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Santino says flatly. “Save your work ethic for your own interests.”

It’s not what Barzini wanted to hear. “You say that like you don’t trust me.”

“I’ve always known you to be an opportunist.” Santino says the word like a throwing stone.

“I’ve had plenty of opportunities to capitalize on the Corleones’ disorganization since the debacle with Sollozzo. Instead, I’ve kept the Tattaglias and the Straccis from coloring too far outside the lines.”

John knows that much is true, insofar as he knows Barzini has called the house as often as the Corleones in the last month, which is to say constantly. Even the times when he’s not on a conference call with Vincenzo on speaker, John can always tell Barzini’s on the line. For all that Barzini has stepped in as New York’s steadying hand and is clearly capable in the role, the aftermath of those phone calls is like tiptoeing through a room of shattered glass.

When Santino just studies the phone in silence, Barzini sighs. “I’m not your enemy, Santino.”

That’s news to John, and he expects Santino to tell Barzini as much.

He doesn’t. Instead, Santino picks up the phone and holds it closer to his face, saying, “Then prove it. Impress me,” in an odd, quiet voice John hasn’t heard before, one that doesn’t match the dead eyes he fixes on a blank patch of wall.

Barzini chuckles in his throat. It’s a good thing he can’t see Santino’s face, or else that odd voice would read differently from whatever the hell Barzini’s hearing right now. “My pleasure.” Those two words are in an odd voice, too. Then it’s gone, and Barzini is all business. “I’ll keep you apprised.”

Santino doesn’t answer that, just hangs up and tosses the phone on the coffee table again, closing his eyes and rubbing them with his fingers in a way he only does when a business partner is liable to give him a proper migraine. John contemplates his odds of success in flying to New York to set Barzini’s brains on fire if the opportunistic rat bastard inspires that brand of hell. As soon as he does, Lorenzo snaps back to life, shooing the boys into motion from where they’re arrayed around the suite staring in confusion at Santino. “Alright, get a move on gentlemen. We’ve got shit to do.”

Santino sighs, and when he looks up at John and Bedelia stepping through the front door behind Ares, his masks are in place once more. “You’re settled, Bedelia?”

“Yes.” One thing John’s always appreciated about Bedelia: she can spot tension in a room like a heat-seeking missile, but more importantly, she knows when not to comment on said tension so it doesn’t blow up in her face.

“Good.” Santino takes the bag one of the boys hands him, pulling out his files. “Take our contributions to the curator. Bring John and a small entourage of the boys with you.”

Bedelia sizes up the boys. “We’ll only be dropping things off for tonight. In and out. Most of the work will happen when the rest of the shipments come tomorrow.”

“I need Spencer to see you, not snatch you to lure me out,” Santino replies, digging out a pen. “Have dinner downstairs if you’d like so that John and the boys can scope the place. Keep an eye out for Spencer.”

Bedelia nods and calls the names of four of the boys, turning to raise her eyebrows at John. “Well, John, what do you say to a short evening in Florence?”

John offers his arm, which Bedelia takes.

They do end up eating in the Continentale dining room, though John doesn’t each much and, more importantly, doesn’t see any sign of Eliot Spencer. At least Bedelia seems to enjoy dinner.

Fortunately for John, Santino decides that John is most useful outside of the suite with Bedelia scaring Spencer off snatching her while waving a neon sign that says Santino is here. Which means John only has to see Santino briefly the following morning, just long enough to get dismissed with Bedelia, and then only briefly again in the evening to check for any news, finding Santino in a foul mood between calls to Palermo, New York, and London but, blessedly, no signs of a migraine. He takes his small mercies and his retreat to his room as soon as it’s offered and takes the dismissal to help Bedelia at Palazzo Vecchio the following morning with equal gratitude.

On the other hand, it means John has to spend two complete days alternating between scanning the halls for Spencer and watching medieval torture instruments get set up. To his surprise, Bedelia talks cheerfully with the curator about each of the instruments with the same fondness she uses to talk about any of the paintings in the house, though Bedelia is nice enough not to comment on his confusion until the tail end of the following day when they are, finally, blessedly alone.

“You don’t like these much, do you?” Bedelia says, not looking up from her notes.

“No.”

“Plenty of people would be surprised by that.”

“Why is that?” He knows why, but he has a feeling Bedelia is waiting for him to ask.

“You are a man of focus.” Bedelia finishes her note to cast an amused smile his direction, flicking to where she knows his guns are hidden in his suit. “And focus is a necessary implement of prolonged pain, as the late Mr. Moscone learned.”

John elects not to comment on that. “I’m surprised you like them.”

Bedelia tilts her head, studying him. “Why is that so surprising?”

“You deal with art.” John nods to the marble statues elsewhere in the room. “Klimt. Caravaggio. Matisse. Van Gogh.”

She’s amused, though John can’t quite tell by what. “What’s to say these aren’t art too?”

“By what standard?”

“Craftsmanship and attention to detail.” She points to one of the instruments with her pen. “Any cursory inspection of them shows that someone spent hours upon hours considering how to refine these to do their job more effectively.”

“Craftsmanship translates to utility, not artisanship.”

“Spoken like a true tradesman.” Bedelia’s eyes flick to John’s jacket where she knows his guns are hidden. “Some would say they’re tools of your trade. Or they were, once.”

“A tool is a tool. Not something to be admired.”

“We put tools in museums all the time. Bowls, hammers, even ancient board games.”

“That’s different.”

Bedelia settles back into her chair, and John already knows what she’s going to say. They do this every time they debate a piece of art. “Why is that?”

“Tools like that are made to help people survive. These are made to destroy.”

“That doesn’t preclude them from being art,” Bedelia says. “If anything, that strengthens the case that these things are art. Some would argue that the best art is that which destroys us.”

“Not like this. All the paintings in the house channel feeling. Whatever feeling that was, they evoke something.”

“So do these.”

“These are made for cruelty, not empathy.”

“Extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy.”

John quirks an eyebrow. “Most people would say extreme cruelty requires an utter lack of empathy.”

“No,” Bedelia returns, “you can’t inflict pain without understanding what about it hurts, even if your own understanding is different from someone else’s.”

“And if you inflict that pain despite understanding what about it hurts, then your empathy makes you a monster.” 

“That depends on your perspective. When King Minos’s wife bore him a monster, the Minotaur, he took the advice of the oracle of Delphi and crafted the Labyrinth for fear of the child. But there were no mirrors in the Labyrinth, and so a child grew up alone in his own playground with endless twists and turns never knowing he was a monster. Until King Minos sent men into the Labyrinth, and they screamed when they saw the Minotaur’s face.”

“Pretty sure he put the Minotaur in the Labyrinth because the Minotaur couldn’t get nourishment from anything except eating people.”

“And therein lies the importance of what you emphasize.” Bedelia inclines her head to one of the torture instruments. “These things are not evil in their own right. Taken alone, they are simply doing what they were made to do. That’s more a statement on those who made them to inflict suffering than the tool doing what it was made to do.”

“Sounds like determinism.”

“You say that like you don’t ascribe to it.”

“There’s plenty to be said for choice.” John looks over Bedelia’s shoulder at one of the instruments, seeing his own reflection in the glass. “Tools don’t choose to be made.”

“But people do?”

“Up to a point, yes. We have an entire world of power to choose.” His gaze settles on Bedelia again. “And up to a certain point, helplessness is also a choice. In any case, people aren’t tools.”

“No,” Bedelia grants, still studying him, “though people often reduce other people to tools. Make them see themselves a certain way.”

“I sense that there’s a point to this somewhere.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As is monstrosity. The question is whether you choose to look, and what you allow yourself to see.”

John sighs and decides to cut to the point or else they’ll be in abstract metaphors all damn day. “You know Santino. What do you see?”

“No, I don’t know Santino,” Bedelia replies, in a tone that says this is a fact as fundamental as air pollution and, like air pollution, it does not prevent her from breathing in. “What I know of Santino is a version of him, the version of him that he knows I need to see. All I know of the truth of him is what I can glimpse through the stitching of his well-tailored person suit. When I talk to him, I address the person suit in the hopes that the real Santino gets what he needs from me.”

“Then why stay?”

Bedelia smiles. A real one. It’s the first time John’s ever seen her do that. “Because I like what I can glimpse through the stitching.” She glances down at the desk, then her watch, nodding to herself to collect her notebooks and laptop. “I believe we need to be off. The curator should be finished organizing everything for the lecture.”

“Right on cue,” a voice calls from the hallway. “Almost like you were waiting for me.” Flora leans around the door and grins as she steps into view, Mikkel and Astrid behind her. “You do good work, Bedelia. No sign of Spencer?”

“None,” John replies, because why would Eliot Spencer ever make John’s life easier. “You’re sure he landed in Florence?”

Flora looks offended at the suggestion that she and Caroline could be wrong. “Trust me, sweetie, Caroline’s got him on camera disembarking at the airport. He’s here.” She scowls in irritation. “Fucking Damien must have given him help to get set up though. He’s not checked into the Continentale and we haven’t seen him on camera since he got here.”

“He’s taking the bait for the Studiolo lecture, isn’t he?”

“Looks like.”

“Would it have killed him to do a fake-out and get it out of his system if he actually doesn’t want to do this?”

Flora snorts. “Given that Damien probably would have taken it as refusing to fulfill the Marker, yes, it would kill him. Which is why we’re going to keep this little farce alive until he makes a respectable effort to cancel the Marker. And why I’m here with presents to make sure the farce doesn’t work.” Which would explain the briefcase in Astrid’s hand. Flora offers an arm to Bedelia. “Come on, sweetie. You’ve got a party to dress for and I’ve got a dumbass to save.”

They return to find Santino in an impressively foul mood. It takes all of two seconds to figure out why.

“Yes, keep them on radio silence,” he snaps. “Yes, everything. Dead air, you understand? Keep the lines open with the brother and watch.”

Pause. Santino’s eyes harden enough that Matteo and Constantine and Valentine probably have bruises all the way in Palermo. “Do I sound like I’m not fucking sure?”

Pause.

“That’s the whole point.”

One of them says something on the phone. Probably beating a hasty retreat. If John had to guess, they can feel the dark look Santino gave upon seeing Flora arrive with John and Bedelia from the other side of the country.

“Good. We’ll check in after the lecture.” He sighs a growl and drops the phone with a clatter on the coffee table.

“One day they’re two and trailing after you like a baby duckling,” Flora says as though commenting on the weather, “the next day they’re twenty-two and the local police commissioner is begging you to clean up after their breakup. Makes me feel old.”

“Bianca’s trying to clean up this mess. That idiot Elio’s the one who can’t read the writing on the wall. And his idiot father’s the one who can’t get his son’s shit together,” Santino replies, shifting over as Flora tosses her jacket at the couch and drops to sit next to him. “Besides, I recall we were young once.”

“ _Elio_ , though?” Flora looks disappointed she even has to say the name. “You’ve got colorful exes, but your taste isn’t that bad.”

“Bianca’s isn’t either.”

“I know it isn’t. So why the frick did she finally give Elio the time of day?”

“I have my theories,” Santino sighs. “But you’re not here to talk to me about that disaster.”

“No.” Flora waves Astrid over and rummages in the bag Astrid opens in front of her, producing a bag of small patches like quarter-sized nicotine patches and tossing them on the table. “The good tranquilizers made portable for rapid-release upon application of the sticky side, courtesy of my smart chemists in Rome. We left unsticky parts around the edges so you don’t accidentally stick them to yourself, but you’ll want to practice with them a few times. Strong enough to knock an Eliot Spencer-sized asshole out cold for an average of forty minutes, allowing for variables in our guinea pigs.”

 _Guinea pigs?_ Ares signs, looking at the patches in trepidation.

“Well I wasn’t about to hinge my idiot brother’s life on an untested product, was I?” Flora bats one of the boys away from picking them up. “Which reminds me, don’t use more than one unless you plan on killing him.”

“We’re not planning on killing him,” Santino says with a warning look at the boys.

“No, we’re just planning on killing you.” John returns Santino’s glare as soon as it lands on him.

“For the thousandth fucking time,” Santino growls, “despite what you seem to believe, I’m not helpless.”

He’s not helpless. John knows that. Santino isn’t like a lot of bosses who rely solely on hired muscle to protect them. He’s not like Viggo either, who is strong as an ox and the kind of brawler that only prison can cultivate. The rare occasion where they’ve been in a truly tight spot has demonstrated that Santino’s just as well-trained a fighter as Flora with an awareness of weapons and human anatomy equal to hers. The difference is that Flora’s foremost talents are physical, while Santino’s greatest asset is his mind, and unlike Flora, Santino doesn’t have fear to restrain him. Which is to say that Santino is startlingly fast in assessing a fight, fast enough on his feet to execute what he assesses before the other side realizes what he’s doing, and entirely unafraid to do things that will get him hurt if getting hurt means getting out of the fight alive. Santino doesn’t have Sameen and Ares because he’s helpless. He has Sameen and Ares because he’s far too valuable to let him risk a fight he can’t win. And this is a fight he cannot win. “This isn’t about you being helpless. It’s about you being outclassed. You can more than hold your own against Sameen and Ares and the boys don’t stand a chance in hell, but Eliot isn’t on Sameen and Ares’s caliber. He’s on mine. And we both know you don’t stand a chance in hell against me.”

“Well then, Baba Yaga,” Santino says the name like it’s an insult, “I suggest you catch him before he has a chance to kill me.”

“We should be combing the streets for him, not sitting here planning a cheap trick.”

“Unlike you, I don’t have the luxury to just survive,” Santino snaps, his eyes flashing.

“Survival is not a luxury,” John snaps back. “Survival is a basic prerequisite of life.”

“Which just goes to show how you think.”

“It’s not how I think. It’s how life works.”

“Despite what you like to believe, life isn’t black and white. It’s nuance and risk.”

“You have no concept of risk and this isn’t about nuance. It’s about fucking posturing.”

“Of course it’s about posturing. Everything is about posturing.”

“Living isn’t. And if you’d let me deal with this when we found out about it a week ago, we could have already moved on with our lives.”

“First of all, yes it is, and second of all, you can afford to be the shadow under the stairs. I can’t. I certainly can’t afford be frightened of everything that goes bump in the night.”

“One of us has to be,” John says through his teeth, well aware that they’ve long since stopped arguing about Eliot Spencer. “And since you have no fucking concept of fear, you’ve decided to put us all through hell and run the risk of Eliot Spencer killing you just to prove a fucking point.”

“So it only matters when you think someone else is a danger to me?”

“Don’t give me that _shit_.” All the boys flinch from John’s raised voice as if from a whip crack. “The only thing that matters to me is keeping you from getting hurt. It’s your arrogant ass that’s bound and determined to throw yourself in the way of things that will kill you.”

“Alright, enough.” Flora plants herself bodily in between them and hauls John by his lapel. “We’re having a word.”

“Have twenty,” Santino growls at their backs.

“Don’t fucking start or I will shoot you in the fucking neck,” Flora says over her shoulder, shoving John into the next room to slam the door behind her and snap in Russian. “Start using your fucking words.” When John just stares at her, she narrows her eyes. “What the fucking fuck, John?”

The two boys who speak Russian, Valentine and Constantine, are both in Palermo with Matteo, which means the only one on the other side of the door who can understand them is Santino. John’s fine with that, so he switches into Russian and doesn’t lower his voice. “I’m going to need more to work with than a flexible noun.”

“Do not test me or I will shoot you in the fucking neck.”

“Because that’s productive.” John steps around her to head for the table covered in guns only for Flora to step in his way. “If you’re about to give me another moving speech about my head being shoved up my ass, save it.”

“I’m not giving you a moving speech. I’m asking if whatever bullshit is going on between you and my brother is going to get him killed.”

“No.”

Flora’s eyes flame with anger. “Don’t fucking brush me off.”

“I’m not brushing you off. And if anything’s going to get him killed, it’s his self-destructive streak.”

Flora catches him by the tie and yanks him back in front of her almost down to her level, her entire face alive with fury. “I need you focused, you understand? Nothing else matters except keeping him alive or there is nowhere on the planet Earth you can hide from me.”

John’s already close to Flora’s level and she already has one hand preoccupied, so when he flies at her to shove her into the wall with a forearm at her throat and his face an inch away from hers, the only thing that hand can do is hold onto his tie. The other arm grabs a knife from one of Flora’s endless hiding places and presses it to his throat, John’s hand catching her wrist as she gets there. “Don’t you fucking dare imply that I don’t care,” he hisses. “I’ll kill every person in this city and burn every building in it and bleed myself dry too if I have to. All that matters is keeping him safe.”

Flora sighs, her anger dimming and the knife lowering from his neck. “Okay.” Back to Italian, then. John takes the cue for what it is and turns away so he doesn’t have to see concern surface in her face and the hand catch his arm. “John—”

“Don’t.” He shakes the arm off and makes his way to the table to load the guns, hearing Flora sigh and the door open at his back.

Flora makes everyone practice handling the patches several times while her small army of supplemental security sets up in Palazzo Vecchio. Not that it will do much good, and John tells her as much.

“If we haven’t already found him, it’s because he’s already inside. Moreau ferreted him in and he got help on arrival to make sure we wouldn’t be able to find him in advance.”

“I’m aware, John.” Given her choice, Flora would probably stay as one last bad omen to warn Spencer to take his chances on the Marker, but she has a meeting in Rome that Santino won’t let her defer. So instead, she gifts them an armory and straightens John’s tie. “Keep him alive.”

“Always.”

The front entrance is a fucking zoo and they’re not about to make Spencer’s life easy by taking Santino through a crowd. So instead, they take him through a back entrance lined with Flora’s security to funnel him straight to the main room where the lecture and exhibit will take place, on the pretense of meeting with the lecturer and Bedelia before the rest of the guests are allowed in.

 _This is a fucking zoo_ , Ares signs, eyeing open second-floor galleries in the blueprints as they drive.

“This is a terrible idea, is what it is,” John says, pulling the car to stop in the loading dock with the boys bookending them.

“Your protests have been noted,” Santino says from the back, offering a hand to help Bedelia out of the car. “Now shut the fuck up before I shoot you myself.”

“Look charming, ladies and gentlemen,” Bedelia says, straightening her dress and striding alongside Santino like the queen herself. “We have art donors to win over.”

“You have art donors to win over,” John replies without looking behind him, leading them through a corridor of Flora’s security. “We have an idiot to keep alive.”

Santino doesn’t answer that, because they’ve just stepped into the main room with the curator and the lecturer and his winning over smile is in place.

The lecturer, Dr. Fell, is a short, stout Englishman with a shock of blond hair, dressed in a waistcoat and bow tie like fashion stopped for him sometime in the 1800s. He talks like a bird fluttering, greeting Santino warmly with a wide smile. John’s not sure what he thinks Santino does, exactly, given that he walks in with Bedelia at his side and an army of security fanned out around him. Maybe he just doesn’t care. Either way, he seems thoroughly touched that Santino traveled for the occasion and contributed to the atmosphere.

“I’m not sure what’s more concerning,” Sameen says as they fan out to line the room, Ares dispersing orders for people doing loops. “The fact that someone made these things or the fact that rich people think they’re cool to look at.”

She’s eyeing one of the nastier implements when she says it. John’s pretty sure it’s made to pull people apart. He doesn’t answer, because he’s not sure which is more concerning either, and in any case, he has an idiot to keep alive.

“Anything?” John murmurs to the comms.

 _Nothing, John_ , Athos replies from the upper level.

“Aristide?”

 _Nothing in the kitchens_.

 _We just looped the back hallways again too_ , Tommaso says. _If he’s here, he’s already here and hiding_.

John doesn’t need to see what Ares signs as she and Sameen glide up to him, taking their posts so they can see the whole room and make a beeline for Santino in a hurry. He’s already thinking it. The only good thing is that Santino is at the end of a row with Bedelia on his other side, the boys in a row of three directly in front and behind him, Athos perched next to Bedelia. John can’t see Spencer in the crowd taking their seats, though he didn’t really expect to. It’s still reassuring, knowing he’d have to pass through a wall of security or directly in front of John, Sameen, and Ares if he plans to work up close. He can’t do that subtly once everyone sits down, though, and the boys are on the second-floor gallery occupying every space that Spencer could conceivably use to get a sightline on Santino from afar.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I am honored to open this series on the body and suffering in medieval conceptions by speaking with you tonight about perhaps the single most effective instrument of suffering man has ever discovered, and that is, of course, love.”

That earns him a round of laughter. John sets his teeth, because of fucking course this is the lecture Santino picked to sit through. But he can’t think better of paying attention and focusing on the crowd, because Dr. Fell is reciting from the sonnet on the slide behind him, the English and Italian side by side.

_Allegro mi sembrava Amor_

_tenendo meo core in mano,_

_e ne le braccia avea madonna_

_involta in un drapo dormendo._

_Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo_

_la paventosa umilmente pascea_

_appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo._

“Dante’s first sonnet of _La Vita Nuova_ finds the poet returning home, overcome with ecstasy at having been greeted, for the first time as an adult, by his beloved Beatrice. His joy is short-lived, however, since he is soon upset by a "marvelous vision" that appears to him in his sleep. A figure who identifies himself as Dante's master holds a woman, naked except for a crimson cloth, in his arms. The figure holds a fiery object in his hands, telling Dante, "Behold your heart." The figure then holds Dante's heart up to the woman, who proves to be Beatrice, and makes her eat it from his hands. After a short while Dante begins weeping bitterly, and weeping, he folds his arms over Beatrice and together they ascend towards the heavens.” Dr. Fell smiles to the crowd, his eyes twinkling. “The eating of the heart is a powerful image.”

Sounds more like a nightmare than a marvelous vision, at least to John’s ears, and he reminds himself to scan the crowd.

“Cino da Pistoia saw the heart as representing Dante's love, and the act of eating the heart as representative of his beloved's growing awareness of his feelings. In the first part of his response, Guido Cavalcanti emphasized the state of Grace provoked in Dante by the ecstasy of his love. According to Rossi, the vision of Beatrice eating Dante's heart, confined as it is to the level of dream, serves to sanctify their love and to unite their hearts, consequently transforming Dante, the "amante gentile", into a poet. The renunciation of earthy gratification, represented by Beatrice's ascent after having eaten his heart, is a necessary antecedent to his acquisition of the poetic word and the exemplary pilgrimage that was to result from it. But if, indeed, the ecstasy of love is a state of Grace, if the eating of the heart serves to sanctify their love, why, then, does Dante weep?”

The slide clicks. John reminds himself to look at the crowd, not at Santino.

“ _La Vita Nuova_ is not alone in its representation of the eaten heart as a motif. A later work, the _Decameron_ , offers a series of tales told over the course of several days. The succession of tragic tales of the fourth day is marked by a distinct symmetry of images. In the first and last tale, a lover's heart is torn from his body: the dominant metaphor of love is made flesh, tragically literalized. At the end of the first tale, Ghismonda weeps over Guiscardo's heart which has been sent to her in a goblet by Tancredi, bathing it tenderly with her tears in an almost ritualistic act which precedes her suicide by poison. At the center of the giornata, in a different metaphorical representation of the heart’s separation from the body through literal separation of the physical body, Lisbetta secretly disinters the head of her murdered lover and places it in a pot of basil over which she weeps for a long time each day. And in the tale of Guiglielmo di Rossiglione, the savagery of the day's tales reaches its climax when the heart of his wife's lover is fed to her in a macabre final meal. And though the intertextuality of _La Vita Nuova_ and the _Decameron_ remains obscure at best, their shared imagery of the eaten heart and the separated body as a fearful thing has deep cultural and anthropological roots.”

The slide clicks to an image of burial. John wonders what the hell any of this has to do with love, forcing himself to turn away from Santino.

“In medieval times the practice of body partition, artistic or actual, was fraught with ambivalence, controversy, and profound inconsistency. The culture of ancient Rome possessed strong taboos against moving or dividing corpses, and Christians of the third and fourth centuries maintained this intense concern for proper burial. Indeed, the belief that corporeal integrity is crucial to identity runs throughout medieval culture. The Parisian theologian Gervase of Mt.-St.-Eloi, for example, insisted that it was better to bury bodies intact so they would be "ready for the trumpet", i.e. for the Last Judgment when, it was believed, the soul would be reunited with the body.”

Which would explain the image of bodies rising from their graves for the Last Judgment. John shakes himself to look away from Santino again, checking the audience only to find his eyes slipping back toward Santino against his own better judgment.

“Despite these concerns, division of the body for religious purposes was ever more frequently practiced in the thirteenth century as Roman taboos gave way to the Christian cult of relics. By the turn of the century, the practice of dividing the bodies of saints to provide relics, and also the bodies of the nobility to enable them to be buried in several places near several saints, became widespread. In 1299, however, Boniface legislated against the nobility's practice of dividing bodies for burial, calling it monstrous and detestable. Despite this, the division of the body for religious purposes continued to gain popular support, and the dismembering and disfiguring of bodies was often carried out for scientific or juridical purposes.”

The slide changes to a sketch of a medieval dismemberment going horrifically for one particular party. Which makes it relevant to the torture instruments, John supposes.

“In fact, the use of dismemberment in capital cases makes it clear that it was reserved for only the most repulsive crimes and that the populace was expected to be able to read the nature of the offense from the precise way in which the criminal's body was cut apart and pieces displayed. And so, we find context for the _Decameron._ In the context of capital punishment, we may understand that the removal of Guiscardo's and Guiglielmo Guardastagno's hearts was intended to be a punishment in the most horrific sense. The act of physical defilement was intended to mark the soul of the deceased and impede his passage to a peaceful eternity. Lisbetta's detachment and re-burial of her lover's head, on the other hand, speaks to the generative potential of bodily division. The part was taken for the whole, as the piece of a saint’s body becomes a relic representing the whole. Just as the relic was the saint, so Lorenzo's head was the man himself, and it was Lorenzo’s head that made the basil pot fertile through the power of love. Which brings us, once more, to Dante.”

The slide clicks to a woodcut of a heart.

“Love is not merely a joyous thing in _La Vita Nuova_ , though Dante describes the initial vision of Love as marvelous. Love is monstrous. Dante weeps in horror and sorrow for the eating of his heart because this act of sanctifying love is also an act of deep defilement. If the concept of corporeal integrity is seen as crucial to identity, then the eating of the heart is the utter destruction of identity, particularly if we take the heart as representative of Dante as a whole person. But though this is a fearful act, Dante does not conclude the sonnet in loss, but rather in transcendence: folding his arms over his love who has consumed him, who has destroyed him to make him a part of her, and together they ascend to the heavens. In fact, it is only through this destruction of his former identity that Dante can become what he is meant to become, assuming the identity of the poet who carries us through _La Vita Nuova_. It is only through the defilement and destruction of what was that there is space for regeneration, a space for becoming. Love is monstrous, yet love is also a necessary transformation. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

The crowd starts clapping immediately, Dr. Fell’s lecture face slipping off into the kindly English professor face delighted by an enthusiastic audience.

 _Well,_ Ares signs, _I’m never looking at Francesco’s basil plants the same way again_.

Sameen snorts. _For the record, if you eat my heart, we’re going to have words_.

 _The hell would I need to eat your heart for? I already have it_.

Sameen beams. John growls at them to stop flirting and focus.

For all of John’s irritation, this stage setting was strategically selected for a show, and not because of the convenient timing of Dr. Fell’s invitation. Flora vetted every detail of the building so they know where to slip away, and more importantly, Caroline vetted every invitee and staff member at this party within three degrees of removal to ensure the only person in the room who vaguely knows Santino is Dr. Fell. The rest of them are all a decidedly Florentine circle of academics and big fish art donors in the small Florence pond, complete strangers to Santino’s legal and illegal circles. Which means that if someone were to see something they weren’t supposed to, they can simply vanish into thin air without a ripple effect. An easy enough feat, considering that every single person manning security for the building tonight is one of theirs. The only thing about tonight that will travel is the story of how it ends, strategically spread to ensure the right story lands in the right ears (with convenient help by Damien Moreau himself, when his time comes, but Moreau doesn't know that yet).

That’s the only thing currently in their favor, because as the lecture dissolves into a party for the major donors, their work gets infinitely harder. Spencer didn’t take any throwaway efforts to kill Santino before now and he knows full well that the party is the best remaining window he’s going to get. John knows Spencer well enough to know that he doesn’t like working by the skin of his teeth, wouldn’t risk losing his window by waiting until Santino left the party. If he’s going to kill Santino, he’s going to do it here. Which means security needs to find him before he has a chance.

Except John’s not a bodyguard by nature. He’s an assassin. And unlike a bodyguard, whose instincts run to checking the room for threats to their ward, John’s instincts run to making sure his prey doesn’t escape. Which means that, try as he might to scan the room for Eliot Spencer, his attention keeps settling on Santino.

“I can hear you thinking from across the room,” Bedelia says as she drifts next to him.

“Bit busy, Bedelia.”

“You won’t let yourself look at him. Why?”

“I don’t need to look at him,” John says through his teeth, not letting his gaze move that way again. “I need to look for Spencer.”

“Spencer will be looking for Santino too,” Bedelia replies, taking John’s elbow to turn him toward Santino. “So if you ask me, you’re looking exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Of course, looking at Santino promptly reminds John of the other reason he wasn’t letting himself look at Santino, which is that Santino is standing in the middle of a crowded room as if in open invitation for Spencer to slip toward him, and the small table at his back where his champagne flute rests near his hand is very little forgiveness. Worse, Santino isn’t paying attention.

He’s flirting.

John can’t help the growl that slips out of him, and he shakes Bedelia off to prowl through the crowd, catch the jacket of the guy flirting with Santino, and pull him a full step back to fix cold-blooded-murder eyes on him.

“What the fuck, man?” the guy snaps, shoving John’s arm off. He does falter once he gets a good look at John’s eyes, though, but he’s still drunk enough on Santino’s charm to risk getting himself shot in front of all these people. “Do we have a problem?”

“Yes.” John takes a half-step in front of Santino to force the guy to take a half-step back, grateful that at least in the crowd Santino can’t strangle him out of spite. “Fuck off.”

That half-step is apparently enough to come down from the high, because he blinks at John and then at Santino and back again with realization dawning. “Sorry. I didn’t know.” The wrong kind of realization, but John’s not about to correct him.

“Now you do,” John replies, radiating an aura of slow death by paper napkin. “So fuck off.”

The guy fucks off.

“Yes, _please_ , be possessive when it’s convenient for you,” Santino hisses loud enough for people within several feet to hear. It’s in Russian, but it’s still not subtle.

“Fuck you.” John turns back around to find Santino looking like he wants to beat him to death with his champagne flute. The feeling is mutual.

“Oh don’t worry, I know better than that.”

Still in Russian, thank fuck. So John takes the invitation to follow into Russian and hopes it’s enough to make Santino listen. “Lower your voice.” Several people are staring, because while no one in this room speaks Russian (including Eliot fucking Spencer, wherever the fuck he is), the tone says this is a conversation they absolutely want to eavesdrop on.

“Fuck. _You._ ” It’s several notches louder, and the content can more or less translate across any language. Several more people are staring.

“Oh don’t worry, I know better than that.” So much for not making a scene. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit busy.”

“I’m well aware of how _busy_ you’ve been with Helen over the last month,” Santino replies, waving off a waiter whose hand passes over the top of his untouched champagne flute like he means to murder him for stealing the closest available murder weapon. “And that you’ve been plenty _busy_ enough to avoid me in the interim.”

Great, so they’re soaring past a scene to a full fucking production. Fantastic. “Can we please not start this right now?” John stays in Russian and lowers his voice in the hopes that maybe, perhaps, they’ve sidestepped into an alternate universe where this will somehow end quietly and he can focus on doing his actual job.

“I haven’t started anything,” Santino snaps, not lowering his voice at all. “You’re the one who wants to have your cake and eat it too.”

At least they’re still speaking Russian. “I want what I’ve wanted for a month and a half,” John bites out through clenched teeth, painfully aware of people staring trying to figure out what’s going on. “Which is to keep you from getting hurt.”

Santino catches him by the lapel when he steps back and yanks him dangerously close. “You’re not a protector, John,” he hisses, quiet enough that only John can hear him and vicious enough for the entire room to know this will end badly regardless of the exact Italian translation. “You’re a killer. So stop pretending.” He picks up his champagne as his other hand lets John go, though his voice doesn’t rise when he raises the flute to his face, thank God. “Besides, how the hell do you think he’s going to kill me in the middle of a crowded room with you on top of me and not get noticed?”

John blinks, his brain suddenly in motion. He surges forward again to close the distance between them, his hand closing over the top of the glass before Santino has a chance to raise it to his mouth, pushing it down until he has it free of Santino’s light grip.

“ _What_ are you doing?” Santino snarls through his teeth.

“Thinking like a killer,” John breathes to make sure only Santino can hear him, even though it is still in Russian, reaching his free hand to take a handful of Santino’s waistcoat and pull him closer. “So play along.” Then he does the only thing he’s wanted to do for a month and a half.

He kisses Santino.

It’s open-mouthed and mostly teeth and not at all crowd-appropriate. Santino lets out a greedy whine from his throat that’s even less crowd-appropriate and makes the kiss even less crowd-appropriate, one hand reaching up to grab John’s lapel again and pull as if he can get him any closer, his other hand taking a fistful of John’s hair and holding on for dear life as if John will vanish the moment he lets go. Which leaves his jacket just open enough to hide it when John slips the hand at Santino’s shirt into his inner pocket to carefully remove one of Flora’s patches.

He lets himself revel in it for the moment it takes to make sure he’s not going to drop the patch because _fuck_ he missed Santino. None too gently, because this is supposed to look like a lover’s quarrel about making a point, which it is. Just for a split second, though, because he has a job to do, and as soon as he’s got the patch positioned in his fingers to be hidden and agile, Santino’s grip shifts on his lapel and he shoves John back. Not very far, though. Just enough to break the kiss and meet John’s eye, his own eyes wild and dark enough to know that playing along wasn’t a forced performance.

Either way, the performance worked. Everyone’s staring at them now. Including the _fucking security_ , if the poorly muffled whispering filtering through John’s comm is any indication. John would make a mental note to kill all of them later, but at the moment, he’s startled to find that _this_ is the calm he’s been chasing for a month and a half.

And it really is the story of his life that his timing for figuring out important things is this terrible.

“You’ve got a funny definition of murder,” Santino breathes between gulps of air, barely audible at all to make sure only John can hear him even though he’s still speaking Russian like a secret. He looks like he’s chanting reasons why he can’t just pull John back into him and put on a proper show for the whole damn room. It’s rather satisfying.

“I don’t see you complaining.” John keeps his eyes on Santino as he moves his head back just enough to raise the champagne flute to his nose. Sure enough, there’s a faint smell there, just hidden by the dryness of the alcohol. Poison.

More importantly, now that everyone is standing still staring at them, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. The waiter who tried to take the flute, about to slip past him. On the right side, the other side from his hand with the patch in it.

Santino’s hand lowers the flute from John’s face, his fingers slipping a patch out of sight in John’s fingers. It’s a sign of Santino’s skill that John didn’t feel his fingers slip into his jacket, or maybe John got a hair more caught up in kissing Santino than he’d like to admit. He can’t even find it in him to be upset about it, just reaches an arm behind his back to stop the waiter in his tracks, turning away from Santino to see where he’s setting the flute down. Then he looks up and meets the waiter’s eye.

“Sorry, John,” Eliot Spencer says under his breath.

“I’m not,” John breathes back, and lets go of the flute to slip a hand under the tray and slip the patch on the back of Spencer’s hand.

As promised, the effect is immediate. Spencer blinks and the tray falls from his hands as he stumbles sideways, already sliding toward the ground and visibly dizzy. And like that, the tittering of the party turns into a concerned flurry.

“Take the boys and secure him,” he says at Sameen and Ares under his breath, making a show of catching Spencer as if he’s drunk. “Aristide, Tommaso, take Bedelia back to Rome. Renato, Giacomo, scrub everything from the feeds. Ares will help from the car.”

“What about Santino?” Sameen murmurs as she and Ares take Spencer, the boys already clearing people away to give him some air so Sameen and Ares can get him off site. “You need backup?”

“You’ll need them for Spencer,” he replies, turning back to Santino. Who is staring at John like he doesn’t care all that much about putting on a show for the whole damn room now that he’s not at risk of being murdered before John changes his mind. Who is also still in the middle of a crowded room, in full view of a crowd of people, after coming within seconds of fatal poisoning with John barely a foot away, after he wasn’t paying attention. “I’ll take care of Santino.”

 _Take care of_ meaning drag him by the collar out of the room to the car so as not to murder him in front of all these people. He drives straight for the Continentale without a word and hauls Santino bodily through the Continentale without a care for the curious eyes that follow their progress. Here, at least, John can’t murder him, with or without all these people. And when Santino manages to separate himself, John throws him into the wall.

“Gentlemen!” Charon snaps at them from behind the desk, her eyes narrowing in warning. “No business.”

“We’re not doing business,” John snaps back, dragging Santino by the arm to the elevator.

 _What are you doing?_ Sameen chirps in his ear in the elevator.

“What do you want?” John replies, hauling Santino into the hall after him by the jacket.

_We’ve got Spencer secured. You want reinforcements?_

“No.” John lets go of Santino just long enough to let him produce the suite key. “Call me when he’s awake. On the phone.”

_What will you be doing that you can’t answer the comm?_

“Taking care of Santino,” John says, taking the comm out of his ear as Santino unlocks the door.

They make it through the suite door, John pausing at the wall to take Caroline’s Faraday bag out of his pocket, drop the comm into it to cut off the peanut gallery, and toss said peanut gallery in the general vicinity of the desk. Then John throws Santino into _that_ wall, trapping him with a chest pressed against him and a hand to the windpipe.

Santino just laughs and caresses John’s hand to press it further into his throat. “Are you here to murder me, John?”

John squeezes harder. Santino’s laughter rings through the room even as he gasps for air.

Then John surges to kiss Santino, feeling fingers gripping his hair as he loosens his grip on Santino’s throat, feeling Santino melt into him even as Santino’s chest heaves for air and his heart hammers into John’s bones as he presses closer.

“You ever do something that stupid again,” John growls into Santino’s ear when he pauses to let Santino catch his breath, “and I swear to God I’ll murder you myself.”

“You say the nicest things,” Santino says between swallowing down air. “And you have a very,” he cuts off in a breathy moan as John bites the sensitive part of his neck, “funny definition of murder.”

“You complaining?”

Santino takes a fistful of hair and drags him back to kiss him hard in reply. Still, his face is careful and hopeful when he pulls John an inch away, just enough to see his face even though he looks like he might suffocate if he has to let go. “Still think this is a bad idea?”

“Pretty sure tonight proves we should come with our own health warning.”

“That mean you’re going to run again?”

“It means,” he pulls off Santino’s tie, “that I spent a month and a half running to try and be safe,” his hands unbutton Santino’s waistcoat, “and you almost died right in front of me,” his fingers unbutton Santino’s shirt, “because I was too afraid to even let myself look at you.” He runs his palms up Santino from his hips to his chest, over Santino’s heartbeat, letting himself revel in looking, touching, feeling. “And the only reason you’re breathing is because I finally let myself stay close and pay attention. So, honestly?” He moves his hands up to Santino’s face and meets Santino’s blue eyes, wild and brilliant enough to blind and gloriously _alive_. “Fuck safe,” he breathes, running a thumb over Santino’s bottom lip. “I’d rather be standing next to you. We’ll figure out the rest.”

“ _Fuck_ I missed you,” Santino breathes, and when he surges to kiss John, John’s already there to meet him and kisses him back with all the feeling he has.

And when they pause for air, John hums, “Missed me that much?” and grinds between Santino’s legs, where it is _quite_ clear how much Santino has missed him.

Santino’s smirk is filthy. “Every.” One hand trails down John’s front. “Single.” The hand unbuckles John’s belt and slips past. “Bit.” The hand strokes up, not _quite_ enough pressure, just enough to taunt before the hand trails back up John’s shirt like Santino would very much like to tear it out of the way.

“Thirty minutes left,” John exhales, leaning into the hand closing around a fistful of his shirt, “on the patch.”

“Then I guess we’d better make a valiant effort to start making up for a month and a half,” Santino replies, pulling John sideways with him as he steps toward the bed. “And to use your phrase?” His tongue runs up John’s throat and his teeth skate across John’s jaw to breathe in his ear, “ _Fuck safe_.”

John does summon the wherewithal to take both of their phones out of their suit pockets and set them on the nightstand before pitching both jackets in a heap across the room. He doesn’t stop touching Santino the whole time. After all, they have a month and a half to start making up for, about thirty minutes to make a valiant effort, and an eager agreement to say fuck all to being safe.

And somehow, in the midst of clawing off clothes and fucking with a feral kind of reverence and working Santino from gasp to moan to sob to scream in short order, John’s finally found his calm.

“You were angry before,” Santino murmurs, roughly thirty minutes later with a far rougher voice, tangled together in the quiet of their own hideaway.

John’s almost high with the stillness of it, the release of muscles he didn’t even realize were clenched. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I was irritated. There’s no mistaking it when I’m angry.” Even that invitation to imagine what he’s like when he’s angry doesn’t stir anything. Just the same steady hum of contentment, like he finally fits in his own skin again. Like he’s finally where he belongs.

Santino hums. “What would you be like? If you got angry?”

“I don’t like who I am when I get angry,” John replies quietly, tracing circles against Santino’s chest. “So I try not to get angry.”

“What happens when you do?”

“I take a lot of pissing off.”

“And if you ever got angry with me?”

John doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

“Good.” Santino laughs like breaking glass, showing all his teeth. “I’ll find a way to put you down.”

“Good.” John sits up just enough to kiss Santino again because there are much better things they could be doing in their little hideaway than talking about John when he’s angry. Making up more of that month and a half, for instance.

Of course that’s when the phone rings. Of fucking course it is.

“We could ignore it,” Santino says hopefully, casting an equally hopeful look at John’s gun like he’s contemplating the merits of security breaking down the door after he shot the phone to silence it.

“Then they’d send someone up here and I’d have to shoot them.” Santino nuzzles into his shoulder like a cat when he reaches across to the nightstand, wrapping himself somehow closer around John in the moment it takes John to settle again and hold the phone to his ear. “What?”

“You busy?” He can hear Sameen smiling through the phone like the actual shit she is.

“You have three seconds to tell me what you want before I reach through the phone and kill you.”

“He’s busy,” Sameen tells whoever’s next to her in delight. “Just calling to remind you that you’ve got a plane to catch in forty minutes. Also, Spencer’s awake.”

“Of course he is.”

“Do I need to call Santino in his room or…?”

“Stop fishing unless you want to get beat with that cane pole.”

“That a yes or a no?” Still fishing, the shit, because she can definitely hear Santino laughing.

“No. Put the phone on speaker and don’t turn the camera on.” It occurs to him that he might live to regret the second part of that sentence as he hands over the phone, between Santino’s laviscious smirk and Sameen’s snickering, but on the other hand, he would have to actually get up and murder Eliot Spencer if he had to share this show. Or vacate the bed any sooner than strictly necessary to set foot on a plane in forty minutes.

“Good _evening_ , Mr. Spencer,” Santino trills in an unmistakably rough voice, sounding entirely too laid for anyone’s sanity. Except John’s, maybe. “I was _so sorry_ to see our little show put you off color.” John settles against Santino’s chest to watch the show from here, which is infinitely superior to staring at Eliot Spencer tied to a chair in a warehouse.

It’s a good thing that Santino has the phone, because John can’t hear the boys through the phone and as a consequence can enjoy the view he’s been wanting to enjoy for a month and a half instead of considering the ways in which he’ll have to murder them later. It’s also a good thing that he told them not to turn the camera on, because he can avoid side commentary from Ares by virtue of not seeing her. He can still hear her smugness through the line, though.

Also Sameen before the line goes dead, whistling a love song like the actual shit she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if we earned that denouement, but I put the ship in the ocean, what do you want from me? 
> 
> Also, I totally didn't cast this in Florence or choose that lecture topic because of the Hannibal field trip to Florence at the start of season 3, what are you talking about? Don't judge me for my shameless Leverage or Good Omens jokes either. Side note: do you have any idea how hard it was to find an Italian version of that sonnet from La Vita Nuova? 
> 
> I wish I could take credit for the "making someone so nervous their accent jumps two tax brackets" side joke, but I didn't. It's from a Harry Potter fic that I haven't read in which Sirius politics in pureblood high society, and that quip is the only thing I know about it. 
> 
> Bianca! I love Bianca. I'd like to think you'll love Bianca too. We'll have grand fun with Bianca. 
> 
> Also, hey Barzini. You lot figured out Barzini yet? I'm very curious about where you think that subplot is going. 
> 
> Bedelia is the best first mate of the ship. Not captain--that honor goes to Flora and Doria--but she does her co-captains proud.
> 
> While it's unlikely that most mob bosses are highly trained fighters, mostly because they don't think they need to be, keep in mind that Massima trained Santino and Flora from the age of four. Remember, the Rosalias are arms dealers and drug smugglers, and unlike kingpins, arms dealers and drug smugglers have to be ready and able to pick fights and win. That doesn't mean Santino is a natural fighter--he's not and this fic isn't claiming he is. He is a highly trained one, though, and the fact that he's not a natural is irrelevant with Red Room training (only a handful of killers in the world are trained this way) unless he comes up against an opponent who's equally well-trained. He could make John's life difficult, but that's not a fight he's destined to win the longer it progresses, and Flora would probably be able to kill him (Flora could throw down with John and stand a 50/50 chance of winning) but for the fact that they've trained together since they were four. Santino has bodyguards because it's not worth chancing a fight against an opponent who could beat him. He's way too valuable for that. 
> 
> I wish I could take credit for writing that lecture. I even planned to write the thing myself. Only the last chunk of it is my original work, the rest is piecemeal from a fascinating lecture series by Brown University on Dante's vision of the eaten heart (https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/themes_motifs/heart/vita_nuova.php), the sources of the eaten heart motif (https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/themes_motifs/heart/sources_4_9.php), and medieval attitudes toward bodily dismemberment (https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/themes_motifs/heart/dismemberment.php). 
> 
> Poor Eliot. He didn't want to get caught in this. Or process the context of Santino's voice on the phone after that scene. Still, he helped get the ship out to sea, so I suppose we owe him a vote of thanks. *sings with harmonizing* For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fe-llow!


	13. my love’s an iron ball (wrapped around your ankles, over the waterfall)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Eliot Spencer no longer a threat, Santino and John head to deal with the other mess threatening to boil over: Santino's cousin, Bianca, and her flaming catastrophe of a breakup with her boyfriend. This would not usually be a problem on Santino's level, minus the part where Bianca is Santino's favorite cousin, Bianca's boyfriend has been pissing in the Sicilians' cornflakes to impress her, and Bianca and her boyfriend live in Palermo in the Cosa Nostra High Table seat's backyard. 
> 
> So they go to Palermo, and John discovers that family is complicated. 
> 
> So is staying. But there are times when trying to figure it out is worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one where the author wrote a chapter with Eliot Spencer and wrote a subsequent chapter with Elio Affini only to realize it’s probably confusing as shit to have two similar names in quick succession and decided fuck this it’s a bitch and a half to change it your name is Elio sorry not sorry.
> 
> Or: the one where you get to meet my favorite OC in this entire monstrosity. You're welcome. 
> 
> FYI so you’re not confused: paranza is Camorra slang for small fry, specifically teenagers (many younger than eighteen) who have pretensions of fighting their way to clan leadership (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/25/camorra-child-gangsters-replace-omerta-with-social-media-boasting). Also, the real Camorra uses a horizontal clan structure, which is why clans are referenced here, but as you can guess, this version is more hierarchical out of practicality for High Table leadership.

Santino sends Spencer to clean up his boss's mess in Belgrade within the hour, along with Ares and Sameen and a small army to ensure he follows through. Eliot Spencer is a man of his word and he didn’t want to kill Santino in the first place, but still. It pays to be prepared. John and Santino depart straight from the Continentale to San Lorenzo that night with some of Flora’s boys and land in the morning to have a few choice words with Damien Moreau.

Specifically, the promise that next time, John Wick will be dispatched to collect Moreau's attack dog, and next time, John Wick will not return Moreau's attack dog with his pretty brains on the inside of his pretty skull, regardless of Santino's regret at killing a man of such talent as Eliot Spencer.

Which is not to say Moreau will get the opportunity to dispatch his attack dog again. “You’ve already set him up, haven’t you?” John says in the car to the airport.

“San Lorenzo’s general election is coming up and the people are keen to be rid of their military dictator,” Santino says cheerfully. “Happily, the dictator is keen to discuss the terms of his retirement and let Damien rot in jail for it.”

“The election’s in a week.”

“You’d be amazed what Caroline can do with a smartphone and a twenty-two-year-old hacker with an authority problem.” Santino grins. “I _love_ countries without foreign extradition treaties.”

Moreau doesn’t know that, of course. The election isn’t for another week. So they spent the latter half of the morning pretending to meet with the house cleaner mopping up after him when really Santino fitted the choke chain on Moreau’s replacement. Fortunately for Eliot Spencer, he’s keen to win Santino’s good graces by making sure that saga closes as promised. John makes a mental note to watch the news from San Lorenzo next week for free entertainment.

Which leaves them free to fly south to Palermo, reconvene with Sameen and the caravan of security traveling down from Rome to meet them, and deal with the other shitshow on the docket: Santino’s cousin, Bianca, and her messy breakup with her boyfriend.

“Ares settled with Matteo and the others in the safe house?” Santino asks as they settle into the car.

“And ready to have a grand old time.” Sameen sounds entirely too eager about it. “Silvio and Benedetta’s compound?”

Santino shakes his head. “Continentale.”

“Will Silvio and Benedetta have opinions about that?” After all, Santino usually stays with them when he comes to Palermo, as he has since he was fifteen.

“Given the circumstances, the Affinis need the illusion of impartiality,” Santino replies, nodding to John to drive.

John shoots him an amused look in the rear-view mirror but still signals the boys to start driving. “You’re related to Silvio and Benedetta, you’ve been staying with them for twenty-two years, and nothing about you is impartial when it comes to Bianca.”

“Don’t give Roberto too much credit,” Santino says flatly, digging his phone out of his pocket when it buzzes and switching into Sicilian. By the tone and the stray _Emilio_ , it’s Barzini. Again.

Silvio D’Antonio, the youngest of Giovanni D‘Antonio's brothers, has a complicated relationship with his nephew. According to Doria, Santino being gay and Santino’s refusal to apologize for it always put a damper on their relationship. But then, Silvio despised Giovanni enough that it won out over any layers of complication between him and his nephew. According to Doria, Silvio disapproved of his brother’s parenting methods and his lack of appreciation toward Massima’s brilliant son. He never got around to forgiving Giovanni for murdering Massima either, given that Silvio was an old friend of Massima’s long before she was his sister-in-law. His wife, Benedetta, never even bothered trying to forgive Giovanni for his treatment of Massima’s brilliant son and especially not for Massima’s murder. After all, Benedetta was Massima’s youngest sister before she was ever Massima’s sister-in-law. Doria wouldn’t say what Silvio and Benedetta found objectionable enough about Giovanni’s parenting methods to warrant a separate mention from snapping his wife’s neck in front of their children, just that things got went from frosty to fourth-degree frostbite after Giovanni got Santino involved in the family business at fifteen. John would have assumed it was because of Santino being gay, because Silvio and Benedetta maintain peace with that solely by virtue of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. Except that Silvio and Benedetta were adamant that Santino stay with them once Giovanni started sending him to Sicily and Calabria every few weeks or so from the age of fifteen on, keeping him anywhere from a few days to weeks at a time in their own home, for all the world as if he was one of their own. Which would explain why, as Flora described it, Silvio and Benedetta’s kids have a hilarious habit of trailing after Santino like a flock of baby ducklings. 

Whatever it was, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Silvio and Benedetta were not sorry for how Giovanni ended, cemented by the speed with which they showed their support for Santino and the ferocity with which they whipped the D’Antonio clan into order after Santino’s takeover (the Rosalia clan didn’t need convincing, just orders on where to stand and who to shoot). And once Santino got Vincenzo and the Cosa Nostra in a cage, Silvio and Benedetta’s outpost in Palermo shifted from a convenient shipping avenue to an outpost of considerable strategic importance, and it’s a statement of their standing in the family that Santino entrusts them to hold it for him. It’s a statement of who they are as people that Vincenzo is their pet project, in much the same way most couples finish their basement.

Even so, Silvio and Benedetta respect Santino in the same way one respects a black widow spider—quietly and from a safe distance. Thus their strategic outpost in Palermo.

Then there’s Silvio and Benedetta’s youngest daughter, Bianca, who grew up with Santino doting on her like his own little sister. Which means, among other things, that Bianca texts or calls him every few days and John’s pretty sure they have a long-distance chess game going in the corner of the study. That’s also how Santino found out about Elio before everyone else did. Bianca’s level of trust in him wouldn’t make any sense but for the fact that she grew up seeing him once every few weeks for days or weeks at a time, that Santino was the one to advocate for her to go to the same Swiss boarding school he and Flora and Gianna did and again for undergrad at Cambridge and grad school at LSE, that Santino pushed Benedetta to let her study financial mathematics and econometrics instead of a suitable cover for the design firm, that Santino pushed Silvio to let Bianca cut her teeth on the fund’s minor interests after returning home from LSE at the start of the summer. That Bianca grew up looking up to him. From what John can tell, she seems to like Santino. Genuinely like him, not in the kiss-ass way of much of the family. Then again, John supposes, that’s not really a moral failing for which Bianca can be held entirely responsible. Or at the very least, he has no room to judge her for it.

The good news about the Continentale is that Santino has a reason to get off the phone with Barzini quickly, which means Barzini doesn’t have time to ruin his good cheer. Also, they’re waiting on a visitor, who announces themselves with a knock on the door twenty minutes after they get settled in the suite: Barzini’s boss, Vincenzo Sangallo, here to talk about the clusterfuck unfolding in Manhattan while he has time to annoy Santino in person.

“Just so I know what I’m walking into,” John murmurs as he steps toward the door ahead of Santino, “is Vincenzo another one of your shitbird exes?”

“Vincenzo and I never slept together, actually. But then, he was always smarter than Domenico and Carmine. And he always had more fun giving me shit about my atrocious taste in men.” Santino grins with too many teeth. “Not that he has a leg to stand on. His taste in men is infinitely worse than mine.”

John elects to take that in the spirit it was intended and pulls the door open.

There are four human tanks in the hallway, between them a man in a suit with a boxer’s build and a lawyer’s haircut and short, slight man in wire-rimmed glasses who looks like someone’s harried accountant. The lawyer raises his eyebrows at Baba Yaga despite his professional smile. The harried accountant takes one look at Santino and John and sighs, “Oh thank _fuck_.”

Santino just laughs. “Afternoon, Vincenzo.”

Vincenzo rolls his eyes and steps through his muscle and around Santino into the room, hailing the other five men to follow him. He looks shorter standing next to Santino, which is saying something. “Now that you’ve finally gotten your shit together, will you _please_ clean up after your damn cousin?”

Santino smirks, following Vincenzo into the room while the boys usher his security through. “What do you think I’m here for?”

“To annoy me.” Vincenzo drops to sit on a chair, rooting files out of his bag as he does to spread them on the table. It does not reduce the image of him as someone’s harried accountant.

“Obviously.” Santino sits opposite Vincenzo on the couch like a panther lazing in the sun, his smirk still in place.

“Right on schedule, then,” Vincenzo mutters, straightening his glasses. “Andrea sends her regards, by the way.”

Andrea is Vincenzo’s wife, an attorney descended from a Cosa Nostra family with a forest of political connections who is by turns his best friend, his political partner, and his Lady Macbeth. Like Domenico and Vittoria Pelle, they’re a heartening sign that love isn’t dead. “Much obliged. How are Cat and Albert?”

Catriona Hartdegen and Dr. Albert Rosenfield are Andrea and Vincenzo’s respective lovers and the best sign of a healthy marriage. Cat met Vincenzo at Swiss boarding school when they were eight and Vincenzo finally got around to introducing her to Andrea at a college fencing match in London, at which point Andrea and Cat were inseparable. Andrea introduced Vincenzo to Albert as an old friend from Harvard on a business trip to Seattle ten years ago. It's unclear what occurred in that week, but whatever it was, it was enough for Albert to pack up the shambles of his life and quit his job with the FBI to follow Vincenzo back to Palermo. According to Santino, Albert is a prickly, chain-smoking asshole who has a deep respect for humanity yet hates literally everyone except Andrea, Cat, and sometimes, _occasionally_ , Vincenzo. Which makes it sound like they hate each other, except for the part where Vincenzo has been devoted to Albert for the last ten years and Albert's take-no-shit and spare-no-feelings life philosophy means they’re oddly perfect for each other. Santino tends to talk about the Sangallo household with the same relish and delight Doria and Yvette use to talk about _Invitation to Love_ , which is to say that the Sangallo household is Santino's favorite soap opera.

“A pain in my ass,” Vincenzo replies in a tone that says they’re his favorite pains in the ass. “But we’re not here to talk about that.”

Santino sighs and gestures for John to follow him to the couch, staying more or less upright but too far into John’s space, given that he has the rest of the couch available to him and would be closer to Vincenzo if he moved further away from John. It’s either the business posture of a shameless jackass showing off his lack of fear for his pet boogeyman or what John knows it actually is: a silent but insouciant sign of affection. It settles something in his chest that was ready to raise its hackles at the thought of Santino returning to a measured distance after Florence, even if it is still measured distance of a kind. 

Vincenzo looks up from whatever he’s digging out of his files, takes in the scene in front of him, and gives a fond eye roll. “You are insufferable, you know that?” Then he notices the lawyer and his security awkwardly lurking at the periphery as if afraid to come closer and narrows his eyes like he means to stab them with a paper clip. “I keep you gentlemen on retainer for your professionalism. Do not give me cause to reconsider my assessment of your character.”

The lawyer drags his eyes from John and Santino. It’s unclear what about the scene is contributing to his mental 404 error the most. “Sorry sir, just wasn’t expecting—”

Vincenzo gives him a glare that could wither a cactus.

The lawyer doesn’t know what to say to save himself, though, and eventually settles for, “Baba Yaga.”

Vincenzo snorts. “Baba Yaga is many things, Mr. Hardman, but he’s not what you should be worried about.” He studies the lawyer, Mr. Hardman apparently, with a cool dissection gaze that says Mr. Hardman will be dissected with a ballpoint pen if he continues being irritating. “You should be worried about the fact that the Continental rules are only ironclad unless twelve people in the world order exceptions for gross misconduct on company grounds and you are making a valiant effort to annoy two of them.”

Irritating Vincenzo doesn’t clear the bar for gross misconduct, but then again, the odds are not in Mr. Hardman’s favor with two High Table seats in the room. “Sir, I didn’t mean—”

“Sit down, Mr. Hardman. You’ll have an easier time getting your foot out of your mouth from that angle.”

He waits Mr. Hardman perches at his left hand to start speaking Sicilian. Sadly for Mr. Hardman, he’s directly across from Baba Yaga and distracted by the notion of how badly Vincenzo’s annoyance might end for him. John is perhaps enjoying this too much.

In any event, it gives him something to do as the conversation stretches on in a language he doesn’t understand. He can guess details, based on files they pass back and forth between them—investments in the fund, shipments from various far-flung corners of the world, corrupt politicians. Most of the time, though, they focus on the shitshow in New York, though John can only tell because Santino repeats bits and pieces of the phrases he said on the phone with Barzini and also, Barzini’s name comes up a lot, at least as often as Michael and Vito Corleone. Vincenzo is exasperated with the Corleones’ performance, Michael in particular, and wants Vito to step out of his advisory role to resume the helm for a more aggressive stance. Santino immediately shuts that down, repeating the same Sicilian phrase he’s been repeating on the phone for weeks which John can only assume means _stay the fucking course_. What’s interesting is that Vincenzo’s exasperation with Michael pales in comparison to his distaste for Barzini and that distaste is mutually exclusive from his relief for Barzini’s steadying influence. 

Vincenzo does like Santino, though. In the way Domenico does, not Carmine. Which is to say that Vincenzo and Domenico like Santino while Carmine likes the idea of Santino, a direct byproduct of the fact that Vincenzo and Domenico know a version of Santino that’s closer to the real one than the version Carmine knows. And as with Domenico, they are friends of a kind despite their regular circling to peevish tones and snappishness and Santino prodding Vincenzo with a stick, insofar as Vincenzo likes Santino despite his better judgment, insofar as Santino has friends. John’s not sure what it says about Domenico and Vincenzo’s character that they know a closer approximation of the real Santino and like him anyway, but then again, John has no leg to stand on.

Vincenzo keeps giving Santino an odd look, though, when he thinks no one is watching. Like something about Santino is worrying him more than Santino usually worries him and he can’t make heads or tails of it. Santino catches Vincenzo giving him that look after going over another detail attached to Barzini and, though Santino’s expression doesn’t change, his eyes briefly harden into a loud and clear _fuck off_.

There is exactly one area Vincenzo keeps pressing and Santino keeps refusing: Sollozzo. Eventually, it annoys Vincenzo enough to switch out of Sicilian with a long-suffering look, perhaps in the delusional hope that Santino will be more agreeable in a different language. “You already know who backed Sollozzo, don’t you?”

“And ordered Sonny dead, yes,” Santino replies glibly, just to rub salt in it.

“Are you planning on sharing with the class?”

“I’ll let you know when you need to know.”

“My dons are tiptoeing toward war. I need to know.”

“I’m the one who cleans up after them. No you don’t.”

Vincenzo narrows his eyes. “You utter shit. You’re playing a long game.”

Santino just smiles. “Of course I am. Which means I need you not to fuck it up by jumping the gun.”

Vincenzo’s problem is not his ability to hold the Cosa Nostra per se. He doesn’t have the quiet steadiness of the ocean tides which has always served Domenico well as the 'Ndrangheta's center of gravity, but he has an encyclopedic mind for detail and a sharp understanding of people and a cold-bloodedness that people don't expect when they look at him. He also has vision and imagination in spades, which is the shortfall Domenico always needs Santino to correct. Vincenzo’s problem is the same problem he had from the moment Santino met him at thirteen in Swiss boarding school: nerve. He has the nerve to stick to the expected script and the nerve to take moderate risks but not the nerve to take bold risks with big payoffs despite knowing every detail of how they might play out. He never would have had the nerve to help Santino edge his father toward open war with the ‘Ndrangheta, never would have had the nerve to let Santino wipe out the entire Cosa Nostra Commission to make room for a clean slate of loyalists, certainly never would have had the nerve to murder his bruiser older brothers afterwards in Vito Corleone’s living room, along with any remaining family members who agreed with Vincenzo’s father that Enrico and Mauro were the superior choice. Which is to say that, like Domenico, Vincenzo could hold his people on his own, but he never shines as bright as he does when he has Santino whispering in his ear, and like Domenico, Vincenzo decided a long time ago that he’s perfectly happy with that. Santino gave him his entire world, after all, and he even lets Vincenzo rule it of his own accord most of the time.

Which does not mean Vincenzo is comfortable with all of Santino’s insane risks, because unlike Santino, he has a healthy sense of fear and an equally healthy respect for consequences. “I don’t want open war, Santino.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“It’s never that simple when you’re involved.” Which is not to say he’s going to talk Santino out of it. “On a related note, how big of a mess do you plan on making with Bianca?”

“Big enough,” Santino replies. “Which reminds me—let Andrea and Albert know they’re in for some fun in a few days, would you?”

After all, Andrea is a prosecutor and Albert is a medical examiner. Which just goes to show that, despite having opposite taste in parts, Andrea and Vincenzo have the same taste in people—Cat is a history professor specializing in death rituals. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the camel,” Vincenzo mutters.

Santino just smiles the same shit-eating grin. “I trust I can rely on you to manage things on your side?”

Vincenzo just gives him the same unimpressed look. “Obviously.” _You jackass_ goes unsaid, but barely. “I’m already cracking down, but they’re not going to take a pissing match quietly. So get the fucking Affinis to stop aggravating my associates so we can focus on the bigger problem.”

“Understood.”

“I mean it, Santino. I don’t need my local affiliates getting bright ideas about independence because your paranza nobodies start cockfights to impress the hens.”

“And I don’t need the local clans fucking up the status quo to impress me,” Santino replies in a clipped tone. “This will be handled quickly and quietly. I get the clans back to the party line, you get your small fry back to business as usual, we both go home and focus on New York. Everyone wins.”

“It’s never that simple when you’re involved.” Vincenzo eyes John again. John’s not sure what he sees, but whatever it is, it’s enough for Vincenzo to shake his head and stand. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you finally got your shit together.”

Then he and his entourage are gone, which means they’re finally alone for the first time in hours. Sadly, they can’t kick Sameen and the boys out to enjoy it, because they have a mess to make of Bianca’s shitshow. So Santino has one of the boys send for food, has another one open the case of tools on the coffee table, has Sameen get Ares on Skype in front of them, flips himself around to spread out across John properly, and lays out what kind of mess they’re making.

It sounds like fun. Especially with the tools in the kit Santino had the boys bring down to avoid a record in the Continentale books. There’s just one problem though. “It’s never going to work.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Sameen groans.

 _I thought you two got your shit together in Florence_ , Ares signs. _Please tell me we’re not doing this again_.

“We’re not.” John thought Santino sprawled across him made the point, but hey. “I’m saying Bianca’s too smart to fall for it.”

Santino laughs. “She won’t. But Elio will.”

John gives him an unimpressed stare. “That still leaves Bianca as a wild card.”

Santino smiles up at John. “I know Bianca. She’ll impress you.”

John raises an eyebrow.

Santino smiles wider. “What, don’t you trust me?”

“Not as far as I can throw you.”

“Flatterer,” Santino purrs. “Admit it, it sounds like fun.”

“Of course, it sounds like fun.”

“Then let’s have fun.”

“We just had fun in Florence.”

“Well, we _ended_ on fun in Florence.” It feels like standing in the sun after weeks of rain to have that smile turned on him again. Santino knows it too, the shit. “Here we can kick things off on the right foot.”

John narrows his eyes without heat. “We only got out of Florence because I thought on my feet.”

“And you were _magnificent_.” It should not be possible for a human to purr, and yet, Santino’s smirk. “But since you did most of the work in Florence, I thought you’d let me set the pace for this round.”

John distantly registers Sameen snickering with the boys in the background. “Are you seriously flirting over your cousin?”

“Yes,” Santino replies, not turning away from John. “So fuck off and go make yourselves useful getting the lay of the land for tomorrow.”

“This is still going to make a mess,” John says after the boys and Sameen fuck off, because flirting is not sufficient to distract him from an impending shitshow with his name on it.

“Of course it’s going to make a mess. That’s half the fun. Live a little.”

“Easy for you to say. I’ll be the one cleaning up the mess.”

“Poor thing,” Santino coos, laughing at John’s raised brow. “I told you I’d set the pace. I’ll clean up this one. You get to sit back and enjoy it.”

“The kind of messes you make benefit from my handiwork.” And yet, even with the relative delicacy of the mess at hand, given that it’s Silvio and Benedetta’s daughter in Vincenzo’s backyard while Vincenzo’s backyard is a powder keg, the prospect of handling that mess with Santino smiling at him like that sounds like the best idea John’s heard all week.

“You forget I’ve literally cleaned Bianca’s messes since she was a week old. An ugly breakup is more than within my powers.”

“Elio’s a moron picking fights in Vincenzo’s backyard when the Cosa Nostra are already feeling fractious. I’m worried about your safety in the powder keg surrounding the breakup.”

Santino rolls his eyes meaning _overprotective much_? “Vincenzo has the local affiliates on a chain tight enough to strangle them. You heard what he said. He doesn’t want to take his eye off Manhattan for local Camorra bullshit.”

“Elio’s already proven he’s the kind of idiot who would pull something stupid with the local Cosa Nostra because he thinks it would impress you. And he thinks he needs to impress you with the deck stacked in Bianca’s favor.”

“Then I give him other avenues to impress me.” When John just stares at him, Santino sighs and pulls himself upright to meet John’s eye. “I won’t hesitate to let you impress me if I need you to get us out of a mess. But until then,” Santino rests a palm on John’s cheek as he runs his nose up to breathe in John’s ear, “I’ve missed you, and I want to show you how much.” He kisses a line along John’s face to kiss him on the mouth. “Let me show you. Let me give us some fun.”

John lets himself _stay_ because he’s missed Santino too and he wants to revel in the feeling of being back in their rhythm again. Still. “You know physical manipulation doesn’t work when I’ve seen you use the same tricks on other people, right?”

Santino hums into his mouth as he kisses John again. And fuck if John hasn’t missed that too. “That mean you don’t enjoy it?”

John pulls him in and kisses him hard, because he’s not in the habit of lying to himself or Santino about things that don’t matter.

He’s still not convinced Bianca will fall for it, regardless of whether Elio does. But he’s missed Santino, and in the scale of messes they have to deal with, this one is comparatively minor and well within Santino’s powers. So John agrees on the understanding that Santino will have him step in if things spiral out of hand and they spend the remainder of the day getting organized with the lay of the land as Sameen and the boys report it.

Elio and his brother have made an absolute mess of things trying to win back Bianca’s good graces. And while Bianca made a valiant effort to get them back in check, she couldn’t outpace both Affini brothers at the same time, and there’s a point at which Bianca’s best efforts only encouraged Elio and Gabriele’s bad behavior. Santino will spend half of tomorrow cracking the whip and soothing the local partners so Caroline and Flora don’t have to manage them personally. That’s well within Santino’s powers, especially once word spreads from the Continentale that he brought Baba Yaga for the errand. In any case, the local partners and the Sicilians alike aren’t keen to attract Santino or Vincenzo’s ire. The problem is how much Bianca and the Affini brothers complicate things in areas Santino doesn’t want complicated and, as a consequence, how difficult it will be to close out this little soap opera without the clans getting upset about it. Santino calls their parents with cease and desist orders as soon as John agrees to the plan, complete with two boys issued to each to ensure Bianca and the Affinis abide their house arrest until Santino visits in the morning.

And when the morning comes and they make their way to Silvio and Benedetta’s compound, John should be thinking this will be a damn mess, because it will be, but all he can think is this is going to be fun.

“Oh, before I forget,” Santino says, stopping John before he opens the car door, “it probably won’t come up, but just in case, don’t call Benedetta a D’Antonio. She’s Benedetta Rosalia and the kids are all D’Antonio-Rosalias.”

“Why is that important?”

“Because Benedetta’s touchy about it. If she hears you call her or the kids D’Antonios she’ll try to gut you and then I’ll have to gut her and it’ll be a bloody mess.”

“So, when in doubt,” Sameen adds brightly, “revert to the classics. I’m deaf and you don’t speak Italian.”

“Works for me.”

Silvio and Benedetta’s villa is a larger property than Santino’s. Or rather, the size of the plot of land the compound sits on is about the same and the villa itself isn’t that much larger, but it uses the space quite differently—there are, for instance, almost twice the number of bedrooms in the main house—and as a consequence, the volume of people and the way the house handles traffic makes it seem much larger. A direct consequence of the Rosalia mentality toward family homes, i.e. if you have a home, your family will stay in it at least as often as they stay in their own. Which is why Rosalia cousins are the most frequent overnight visitors at Santino’s house, though not in the way they’re overnight visitors at Flora’s palazzo (Santino has cousins every other week, while Flora almost always has someone staying in one of her guest rooms) for the sake of keeping the peace with the D’Antonio cousins. John would bet money the Rosalia cousins would kill to be in on this visit, but Silvio and Benedetta’s common sense (and Santino’s firmly worded phone call) prevailed.

So instead of a small collection of Rosalia aunts and uncles and overeager cousins, there’s just Silvio and Benedetta’s housekeeper and a woman John can only assume is Benedetta Rosalia, given that she’s Flora-sized and looks eerily like Doria’s photos of Massima. Still, there’s no confusing Benedetta for Massima, regardless of the fact that she’s older than Massima ever got to be—unlike Massima, who was only ever photographed in neutral colors and red lipstick, Benedetta ascribes to a no-color-or-pattern-left-behind philosophy, the same one she used to decorate her house. It should make Benedetta and the house overwhelming but instead strips away the forbidding veneer and renders Benedetta and the house warm and bright and inviting. Minus the security circling the house, of course, and the shade of coolheaded competence in Benedetta’s eyes that says you could drop any random collection of parts in front of her and she’d assemble something lethal and shoot you with it before you dug out a stopwatch to time her.

“I’d ask if you’re going to stay for the Festino di Santa Rosalia,” Benedetta says as she ushers them in, “but then I’d have to be offended when you lie to me about being sorry to miss it.”

Santino laughs and hugs her. “Then shall we skip ahead to the part where I give you Flora’s gift for the festival?”

He withdraws a small box from his pocket and holds it out like he already knows it will win her over, which it does. Benedetta smiles as soon as she sees the gift, a cross made of coral set with seed pearls. “It’s lovely. Where did she find it?”

“An antiques dealer in Rome with excellent taste in Victorian jewelry.” Santino’s lips twitch with an inside joke he’s not trying to hide. “That or a street vendor, can’t seem to recall.”

Benedetta rolls her eyes. “Don’t go around telling people their queen is a whore, darling, it’s in terrible taste.” Her smile widens, though, so at least she also thinks it’s funny. Then again, the villa she and Silvio raised their children in used to be a convent. Then Benedetta snaps the box closed, her smile slipping out of sight with it. “I know you’re not here to spoil me, though. I believe my fool daughter’s in the back parlor with the rest of them.”

Bendetta leads them through the house, nodding to household staff as they go until they end up in a sunny sitting room. The entire family gathered to greet them—a man with a full head of white hair that must be Silvio, a man in glasses of about thirty perched by the mantel that must be Leo, a woman of about twenty-eight in red lipstick and well-coiffed dark hair that must be Claudia, a twenty-six-year-old woman sitting across from her that must be Rosa going by the blonde highlights in her hair and the Rod of Ascelpius tattoo on her forearm, both of which she wears like visual beacons of being a proud outsider. Which would leave Bianca, the smallest and quietest of the lot, perched on a sofa alone with an empty space next to her as if waiting for her cousin to arrive, dressed in black like a dark spot amid the noise and color of her siblings with the upright bearing of a lifelong ballerina and a general flavor of nervousness hanging about her that carries a discordant aftertaste of strong emotional control.

Bianca D’Antonio-Rosalia looks very much like her cousin, having come from almost the same D’Antonio and Rosalia stock. The combination in her shook out closer to Santino than any of her siblings, because while they all have some variation on the same features, Bianca is the only one who got them in the same extremes Santino did—the D’Antonio dark hair and the Rosalia curls that defy the laws of physics paired with a diminutive stature not at all diminished by those curls and lean muscle that hints size has no correlation to relative threat. But most striking of all, Bianca is the only one that got the wickedly intelligent blue eyes like molten glass. She looks more like him than even Gianna, throwing into relief the visual disparities that mark Gianna as Santino’s half-sister, and had she stayed in Gianna’s room and greeted him as Gianna when he first moved in, John would have wholeheartedly believed she was Gianna. And yet, she’s clearly not Gianna. Bianca may have the D’Antonio blue eyes, and they may be just as eerily pale and bright and clever as her cousin, but whatever it is in Gianna’s eyes that makes them so disconcertingly familiar isn’t there.

Granted, John is mildly distracted by the animal laying in Bianca’s lap that is…probably an enormous black cat and not a small Iberian lynx wearing a cat’s collar, because it’s way too fluffy and doesn’t have spots and also, Benedetta and Silvio don’t strike him as the flavor of crazy that would let their daughter keep a feral wildcat as a pet. Then again, the cautious looks from the rest of the family suggest it might be some sort of vaguely domesticated demon. The fact that it marches up to Santino to greet him as if greeting its own kind seems to be further evidence to the family that it is, in fact, a literal demon from hell. Then again, the fact that it’s entirely at ease around Santino suggests that whatever the hell it is, it’s a rare species on account of atrocious survival instincts.

Still, after getting past the initial greeting, the family is apparently comforted by the fact that Bianca’s demon cat from hell is content to demand attention from Santino rather than claw their eyes out and the siblings promptly angle to catch Santino’s attention in a way that makes it easy to envision them trailing after him like baby ducklings. Claudia plays it cool by asking after Flora and chatting briefly about the firm. Leo is less graceful in opening a short dialogue about the fund. Rosa isn’t in the business and therefore has neither fear nor shame. The only one not angling is Bianca, but then again, Santino went to her first as if the rest of the room was irrelevant.

No one notices John and Sameen slipping in the room after Santino until Silvio nods to them, apparently noticing who isn’t there just as much as who is. “I’m surprised Ares isn’t here.”

“She’s caught up cleaning a mess in Belgrade,” Santino replies easily. John’s not sure whether Palermo or Belgrade would be more offended to know they’re now considered the same city, but it’s as good an excuse as any to explain away why Ares is holed up out of sight in a safe house outside the city manning the tech with Valentine for this little visit. “I’m afraid I have to make do with John and Sameen.”

The siblings turn to John looking suddenly eager. “That’s Baba Yaga?” Leo asks, sounding entirely too excited for his own health. 

“John Wick, yes,” Santino replies. Sameen rolls her eyes in a way John knows means _what am I, chopped liver?_ Only to jump when Rosa screeches in surprise—the demon cat from hell, who apparently just noticed John, leaped off the couch to prowl up to him. The look Sameen gives it as it approaches says she’s encountered it on previous visits and it may or may not be preparing to gnaw on John’s bones. The looks everyone else gives it has John prepared to draw his gun, but the demon cat from hell just sits and stares up at him as if fascinated.

“Khoshekh, leave him alone,” Bianca says, looking sheepish. Also terrified of John when she meets his eye. “Sorry, he doesn’t normally do that.” Of course she named her demon cat from hell for the ninth biblical plague, because what the hell else would a D’Antonio child name their pet?

“He kind of hates everyone,” Rosa supplies. “Except Bianca and Santino. Usually he likes Flora. He mostly argues with her, though.”

John doesn’t bother asking about Caroline. He doesn’t want to envision Caroline striking up a conversation with a fellow demon from hell about the souls they’ve eaten this week.

“He probably won’t eat you,” Leo adds, as though he can read John’s mind.

“If he tries to eat him, do we get to see Baba Yaga kill Bianca’s cat?” Claudia mutters. She sounds hopeful it will be a bloody death.

“You’re both assholes,” Rosa replies, though she doesn’t look convinced that Khoshekh trying to eat Baba Yaga or Baba Yaga killing Khoshekh are out of the realm of possibility.

John’s not convinced that Khoshekh trying to kill him is out of the realm of possibility, so he just stares back and hopes for the best. Up close, Khoshekh’s size and fluff say Maine Coon, his pointed ears and muscle say Iberian lynx, and his startlingly blue eyes and general countenance say literal demon from hell. When John doesn’t do anything but stare, Khoshekh stands on his hind legs to rest enormous paws on John’s stomach, letting out a loud screech that might be the meow of a literal demon from hell and staring at John as if demanding something. John’s not sure what he’s demanding if not permission from his mistress to disembowel their visitor.

Bianca turns bright red and shoots to stand. “Oh Christ, Khoshekh, stop it.”

Khoshekh just keeps staring at John, one ear twitching in Bianca’s direction. When John just stares back, Khoshekh’s blue eyes narrow and he seems to let out an annoyed sigh. Then he launches himself at John, leaving John to pull his arms up as Bianca shouts and dives across the room for her cat.

Only to skid to a stop a foot away from John as Khoshekh melts into a puddle of demonic fuzz in John’s arms, rubbing his head against John’s shirt radiating contentment. Also a rasping death rattle as loud as a boat motor that might be purring if literal demons from hell knew how to purr, a suspicion confirmed when it ratchets up as soon as John shifts his grip on him to run one hand along surprisingly soft fur.

Benedetta mutters something in Sicilian, but judging by the fact that she crosses herself, this is further confirmation of Khoshekh’s status as a literal demon from hell. The rest of the family just stares. Except Santino, who looks like he’s trying very hard not to laugh.

Bianca stares between her demon cat from hell and John while turning ten shades of red. “He doesn’t normally do that.”

“It’s fine,” John says, briefly meeting Santino’s eyes over Bianca’s shoulder. It wins him stares like the family is trying to process what a boogeyman’s voice sounds like. “Cats like me.”

That earns him poorly contained snickering from Sameen and a smirk from Santino, who pads up to Bianca to catch her arm. Khoshekh opens one eye and reaches a paw out to catch Santino’s hand in the air, the purring ratcheting up again when Santino rubs his ear. The look Khoshekh gives Santino is something to the effect of _I might consider giving him back eventually_ , earning a snort from Santino before he lets go to turn Bianca around and guide her back to the sofa. “Unfortunately, we’re not here to talk about pets.”

“We told her to clean up her act,” Leo says, earning a glare from his sister.

“So I heard,” Santino says mildly.

“Actually, we told her the Elio thing was an idiotic idea from the start,” Claudia mutters, earning a glare of violent demise from her sister and a mutter of _because your taste is so phenomenal_ from Rosa.

“So I heard,” Santino says just as mildly.

Which is when Benedetta takes her cue. “Alright, everyone out.”

“Your sister has things to talk about with Santino.” Silvio helps his wife herd their other children out. They all look warily at Khoshekh as they go. Except Silvio, who inspects John ever so briefly as he and Benedetta clear the room. John’s not sure what Silvio sees or what he thinks about it, just that his gaze settles on Santino for a blink before he goes.

Bianca watches her family file out, waiting until they’ve all scattered throughout the house before her eyes settle on Santino. “I’m in deep shit, aren’t I?”

“Afraid so, darling,” Santino replies. “The Palermo police commissioner asked me to deal with this. As did Vincenzo.”

“Vincenzo too?” Bianca cringes. “Fuck.”

“That about covers it, yes,” Santino says mildly. “I gave you a month to close out this little drama.”

“I’ve tried.” Bianca sighs in clear exasperation, her game face slipping on. “I told Elio we were through and we would carry on Camorra business. I told him not to be an idiot and force you to come down.” She scoffs, glaring at the arm of the couch like it personally offends her. “He keeps going on about love or some such crap.”

Enter stage left: one of the reasons why Santino is so fond of Bianca. “That’s my girl.”

Bianca doesn’t look all that pleased though. “Well, he was, anyway. He stopped answering a week ago.” Matteo and Valentine’s handiwork, but Bianca doesn’t know that.

“I didn’t know you were still talking to him.” Caroline already gave him their text exchanges since the start of the summer, but Bianca doesn’t know that.

“Mostly through Gabriele now.” Bianca rolls her eyes. “Especially since Elio decided to be more of an obstinate jackass to impress me.”

Santino’s lip twitches up. “The brother?”

Bianca narrows her eyes in a way that says she knows what that lip twitch meant. Except her mouth twitches up too and gives her away. “Shut up. Not like that.”

Santino’s lip twitch widens into a smirk. “Darling, I never judge anyone for anything.”

“Because you have no room to judge anyone for anything,” Bianca says drily. She glances at the hall and then back at Santino, and though her mouth stays tilted up, she bites her lip and her nervousness takes a stronger tempo. “What are you going to do? About me and Elio?”

“Depends on what I find.” Santino’s tone stays light and his face gentle, though John knows he’s inspecting Bianca. Looking to see what he’ll find.

Somehow, despite her nervousness, it feels like Bianca is inspecting Santino too. Except that watching the way John thinks she is would require a measured calm that doesn’t click with her nervousness, and despite the dissonance, he can’t shake the clear sense of nervousness or the clear sense of watching. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t let Elio keep fucking things up with the Sicilians because he’s trying to get your attention. Or let you keep getting into skirmishes to fix his messes. I certainly can’t let you two keep getting into public fights for all of Palermo to see.”

“This isn’t his fault.”

“Whose, then?”

“I was the one who encouraged him.”

“If men were held responsible every time they claimed women provoked them, there wouldn’t be any of the male species left.” His gaze softens again as if coaxing Bianca out of hiding. “Just for my own edification, why did you give him the time of day? I always had the impression you couldn’t be bothered.”

Bianca shrugs, her face sheepish. Even so, it feels like she’s measuring her words as she says, “I suddenly have a lot of free time. The accounts at the fund are easy and Pappa and Leo won’t give me something that’s interesting. Not that I’m complaining,” she says quickly, as if she just remembered she’s talking to the man her father and brother work for.

Santino gives her an amused look again. “You forget I was the one who put you through Le Rosey and Cambridge and LSE. I’d be shocked if you weren’t bored down here.”

“I mean, I like the accounts. They’re just, you know. Little. Not a lot to do or room to be creative. And Vera and Tat offered a diversion helping out with Mamma’s shipments at the port.”

Santino rolls his eyes. “Why am I not surprised that I have the Rosalia cousins to blame for this?”

“You love Vera and Tat.”

“Of course I do. They’re still a matched set of hellhounds.”

John’s not sure why they expected twin girls instead of a matched set of hellhounds when a Rosalia enforcer decided to raise kids with her retired Red Room husband. Still, it’s a promising sign of the wrath Vera and Tat will grow into if they can raise this much hell before they’re even out of college.

“This isn’t their fault. They were just kidding around. I wanted a bit of fun and took their suggestion.” Her face darkens again. “Then fucking Elio got fucking attached.”

“Men have been known to be possessive bastards,” Santino says, being a poster child for possessive bastards. “And as I said, I’m not about to judge you for a bit of fun. But we can’t let this mess persist, or the Sicilians will get properly snarky and the local Camorra clans will lose patience.”

Bianca’s eyes turn pleading, even though it still feels like she’s waiting for a cue. “I’m trying to fix this.”

“I know that, darling,” Santino says gently. “What does _fix this_ mean to you?”

Bianca’s gaze drifts again to the hall and back to Santino. “Means I want this fucking problem to go away so we can all go back to holding the line like we’re supposed to.”

It’s not really an answer at all, just a restatement of her previous sentence. Except Bianca is clearly wary of the hallway. 

Santino knows it too and flicks a glance to the door, lowering his voice. “How about we talk more later where the walls don’t have ears?”

It’s clearly the answer Bianca was looking for, because her shoulders sag in relief. “Whereabouts?”

Santino hums, clicking his tongue in thought before dropping his voice still lower to make sure John and Sameen have to strain to hear him. “How’s the Norman Chapel at, say, midnight?”

“How melodramatic.” Bianca’s tone says she expected it and her smile says she’s looking forward to it. “Completely in character. Sounds like fun.”

“Just make sure the house security doesn’t notice you’re gone. Doesn’t do much good to have walls without ears if the peanut gallery is trying to be helpful by chirping in your mother’s ear.”

“What, like I don’t know how to slip past security without being noticed?” Bianca looks genuinely offended by the suggestion. “I’ll have you know I’ve been in and out of here for years with no one the wiser.”

“Oh trust me, I’m familiar with your work. As you recall, I was the one who got menacing phone calls from your mother when you slipped your security net at school from the age of twelve to twenty-two.”

Bianca winces. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” Bianca grins. “And neither are you.”

Santino’s smile says he’s never sorry for anything. “Do bring a knife or something, would you?”

Bianca looks still more offended by that suggestion. “You and I both know I can hold my own against most anyone I meet on the street.” Which would sound like a delusional statement, given that Bianca is barely Flora-sized (Flora without her heels on), minus the part where that statement suggests Bianca was trained like Flora and Santino.

“Even so, if you’re going to be on the streets without armed chaperones, I’d feel better about you being armed to compensate the difference.” Then, on second thought, “Don’t pause for any knife fights en route.”

Bianca’s lip curls. “What am I, Elio?” At Santino’s arched brow, she heaves a put-upon sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be boring and won’t leave a trail of blood in my wake. Palermo will never even know I passed through.”

“That’s the spirit.” Ares will erase Bianca from the security cameras before she ever leaves the compound, but Bianca doesn’t know that.

“And…Elio?”

“We’re headed straight to the Affinis from here.”

“Good luck,” Bianca says, in a tone that says Santino will need it where Elio’s involved.

Santino just laughs. “Have faith, darling.”

“There’s no faith required. Just the patience of a saint.” She looks Santino up and down like she’s trying not to laugh. “But then, you’ve always had more patience than me.”

“I don’t have more patience, I just have fifteen years more practice applying it.” He stands, pulling Bianca with him. “Walk us out?”

Khoshekh blinks his eyes open when he hears Santino and Bianca walk to the door, though he shows no inclination to move, so John follows them with Khoshekh still a contented puddle of demonic fuzz in his arms. Benedetta and Silvio meet them in the entryway. They do not look any less concerned to find Khoshekh has made a new friend.

“I’ll pay a house call to the Affinis and see how many fires need putting out downtown,” Santino tells them. “Stop by the Continentale tomorrow morning with Bianca. We’ll go from there based on the level of cooperation.”

“Bianca will cooperate,” Silvio says, with a warning look at Bianca.

“I was talking about Elio,” Santino says lightly, “but yes, I know Bianca will cooperate.” It’s as much a warning as an acknowledgement.

Bianca thinks about it for a second and hugs Santino. It takes a second to realize why it looks strange—John’s never seen Santino let any of the family do that except Flora every time she sees him and that one time in the orchard he hugged Gianna. Santino doesn’t seem surprised, though. More surprising is that he hugs her back just as much as he hugs Flora. “We will fix this, darling,” he murmurs in her ear.

“I know.” Bianca lets him go and smiles. Then they both turn to John, clearly trying not to laugh.

Ah. Right. Khoshekh. The literal demon from hell. Who has taken up permanent residence in John’s arms, or at least Khoshekh thinks so.

He cracks one blue eye open when Santino scratches his ear and says he should get lost unless he plans on coming along. Khoshekh fixes said blue eye on Santino with an unimpressed stare to the tune of _bite me_. And when John sets him down, he lets out another screeching meow and weaves around John’s legs looking hopeful. He trots after them when they walk to the door looking still more hopeful, though that might be because Bianca follows them to the door. When Bianca doesn’t follow them through, he sits on her feet and gives John a look with those wide blue eyes that translates something to the effect of _you’d better be coming back, motherfucker, because you’re mine now_.

They barely make it out the door before Sameen doubles over in laughter, howling, “ _Cats like me._ ” The boys stare at her like she’s lost the last of her marbles. 

“Not that I should ask,” John says as he herds her to the car, “but why is that funny?”

Sameen’s grin as she slides into the passenger seat says he shouldn’t have asked. “Because that’s the only time anyone’s ever called Santino a pussy and gotten away with it.”

Santino gives her a glare that is an excellent reminder of why Khoshekh greeted Santino like his own kind. “Drive before I think better of getting blood in the upholstery.”

Which leaves the other half of this equation: the Affinis.

Santino wouldn’t normally come down to deal with problems on the Affinis’ level, given that Silvio and Benedetta’s standing in the Camorra relative to the Affinis is that of a regional director to a graveyard shift supervisor. The only reason Santino is headed to the Affini household is because of Bianca, or rather, because Bianca’s parents defer to him directly. Which means Elio’s catastrophe of a breakup is the closest the Affinis will ever come to interacting with the High Table.

So when they open the door to find Santino D’Antonio on their doorstep, flanked by security and looking about as out of place as the Blue Moon diamond in a heap of paste crystal, they’re a lot more deferential than Benedetta and Silvio.

“Good morning, Signor D’Antonio,” Roberto Affini says, in a tone of surprise that says the Affinis scrambled to look less surprised upon walking to the front door earlier than anticipated. Which just goes to show how little the Affinis understand the key feature differentiating them from Santino D’Antonio: when one meets with Santino D’Antonio, one keeps time by Santino D’Antonio’s watch.

“I hope you’ll forgive the rudeness, Roberto,” Santino replies with a charming smile that says Roberto has no choice in the matter. “I know I told you we would be a bit later.”

An hour later, to be exact. But Roberto has no choice in the matter, and so his answering expression is accommodating. “Not at all. Please come in.”

Santino takes the invitation and steps inside, his smile flicking to blinding as soon as he lays eyes on Roberto’s wife, a fool who clearly woke up this morning convinced she would be welcoming but defensive of her son. “And this must be your lovely Isabella.”

Isabella is blinded by the smile, charmed by the curls and expensive suit, and won over by the bright blue eyes. Roberto’s accommodating look grows strained around the edges. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetic. Sameen gives John a look as Santino charms Isabella meaning _wasn’t I right_? She told John last night that Isabella Affini reminded her of Karen Friedman, woefully idealistic about the glamour of the lifestyle and willfully ignorant of reality. John gives her the same look he gave her last night, meaning _I don’t know why you took the time to watch Goodfellas_. Even dazed by his charm, Isabella still looks surprised and nervous that Santino D’Antonio would be seen setting foot in an associate’s house, especially in a time of strife. Which just goes to show how little the associates understand of the key feature differentiating them from the High Table: associates need to worry about law enforcement, and the High Table needs to worry about law enforcement the way a tiger worries about a dimwit cub attracting villagers with shotguns.

Roberto looks even more unhappy than Silvio to find Baba Yaga as Santino’s shadow. But Silvio is a mere one step to the left of the High Table seat, while Roberto was sworn in as a twenty-something to toil the rest of his life moving Rosalia shipments through the port. Silvio has the standing to comment on Baba Yaga. Roberto does not. So instead, he ushers them into the living room with a wary eye in John’s direction that doesn’t diminish when John and Sameen settle in Santino’s periphery.

“Can I offer you anything?” Isabella asks, pausing at the door as if the reminder of Santino’s protection shook some of the charm loose.

“Coffee would be wonderful if you wouldn’t mind, my dear,” Santino replies as if it matters a lick what Isabella minds. His eyes flick to John while his back is turned to the Affinis with a look in his eye that promises fun. Then his smile settles and he perches on the couch to flash it at Isabella. “And Elio.”

That shakes more of the charm loose, but Isabella takes the cue to vanish. Roberto hesitates at a chair, though. “Signor D’Antonio, I had hoped we might—”

Santino fixes his gaze on Roberto with his smile still in place and a warning look in his eye that strangles the words in Roberto’s throat. “This is Elio’s mess. Any discussion of it will involve him.”

Roberto takes the hint and leaves Santino to cast a derisive eye around the room with the soft sounds of an unintelligible conversation further back in the house. Then Roberto reappears with a cup of coffee and Elio in tow.

It says something about John’s life these days that his first thought upon seeing Elio is that Khoshekh would eat him. His second thought is that Elio is the same type of young, dumb thug as Iosef Tarasov—an irritation forever consigned to minor jobs with minimal damages because no amount of teaching can better him. Granted, Elio is the Camorra version, which means instead of wannabe Russian-American gangster, Elio is a punk with paranza pretensions, and unlike Iosef, who at least suffered Viggo’s periodic efforts to knock sense into his thick skull, Elio’s father didn’t have the sense to correct those pretensions for the same reason the gap between the D’Antonio-Rosalias and the Affinis is visible in the furniture. The D’Antonio-Rosalia compound is full of priceless furniture lived in and lovingly maintained to wear its age with pride. The Affini house is full of new, expensive things with nary a thread out of place.

Roberto at least has the sense to know that paranza pretensions will not fly with the High Table seat. By the look on Elio’s face as he stops himself from addressing Santino before being spoken to, Roberto articulated that sentiment. Probably in the kitchen while Isabella poured coffee.

Santino knows he’s just _itching_ to talk, though. Which is why he doesn’t even look at Elio. Instead, he takes the coffee from Roberto, takes his sweet time blowing on it, and says without looking up from the cup, “Good morning, Elio.”

Elio opens his mouth, but Roberto steps in front of him and speaks before Elio has a chance. “Signor D’Antonio,” he says, perching on a chair adjacent to the couch, “if I may?” Santino doesn’t look up from drinking his coffee, which Roberto unwisely takes as a cue to continue talking. “We understand this is a tenuous time. This is all—”

Santino has spoken over the phone with Roberto in a tone of polite distance, which lends to Roberto’s delusion that he can manage this as much as it proves he’s never met Santino in person. As evidenced by the fact that he keeps talking when Santino sets down his coffee and gives him a look like walking into a concrete wall.

“Roberto.”

Santino speaks at half Roberto’s volume. A word dies half-spoken in Roberto’s throat.

“I told you this is Elio’s mess and any discussion of it will involve him. Sit.”

He’s still staring at Roberto as if pinning a flea to a microscope slide by its wings, so it takes Elio a moment to realize the order was meant for him. He sits in a chair as if scolded by a schoolteacher, which is a hilarious posture to see on a twenty-something thug.

Santino settles his gaze on Elio, who promptly freezes like a hare who just spotted a hawk. “Why am I here, Elio?”

Elio clearly didn’t expect to be addressed and, by his wary blink, John suspects Roberto warned him within an inch of his life against saying anything at all. “Um…I would assume you know. Sir.”

“Obviously.” Santino’s lip twitches as he says it— _sir_ is a word that comes to Elio about as naturally as deference to authority, which is to say it doesn’t. “But I’d like to know why you think I’m here. So that I know we’re on the same page.”

“Bianca. And the Sicilians.”

Santino doesn’t react. Elio’s fidgeting says he doesn’t know what to do with that. “Those are two rather different things, Elio.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which one?”

“Sorry?”

“Which one is it?” Santino repeats in a patient tone that says Elio won’t like it if he makes Santino ask again.

“The Sicilians, sir. And how I’ve been handling them.”

Santino hums, his stare steady on Elio. He lets Elio stew on that for a beat, then says, “Would you like to know why I’m actually here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because the Palermo police commissioner called and asked me to get his streets under control.”

Elio’s fidgeting with his sleeve says he did not know Santino was on a personal basis with the Palermo police comissioner.

Sameen coughs into her hand. John side-eyes her. It still takes her a second to school her face out of laughter enough to lower her hand.

Santino waits.

John can hear the gears grating in Elio’s head. Finally, he says, “I didn’t know you spoke with him, sir,” and Sameen bites her cheek trying not to laugh again.

“We have a rather unique understanding with the Palermo law enforcement. It is Sicily, after all.” Santino smiles at his own joke. Elio doesn’t know whether to laugh or not. He gets his answer when Santino’s smile drops. “That said, their patience only extends so far. Next thing you know, they’ll start asking why we’re any different from the low-level thugs we keep in check.” Santino drapes his arm over the back of his chair, inspecting Elio down his nose like the king before a pickpocket. “And more importantly for you, _my_ patience only extends so far.”

“I know. That’s why I couldn’t let it stand.”

“Let what stand?” It’s only because John knows Santino that he knows Santino finds this funny, because Elio is nowhere near bright enough to pull off the ploy he’s setting up. Certainly not bright enough for it to work against Santino.

“The Sicilians. They saw what’s been happening in New York and they’ve been disrespecting us. Looking to pick fights.”

 _Disrespecting_ is the word that Elio sticks on, but he wants Santino to stick on the sentence after it. He doesn’t. “Us?”

“You.” Elio takes Santino’s raised eyebrow as an invitation, which it is. To dig himself a grave, anyway. “You are the Camorra, sir. Disrespect to the Camorra is disrespect to you. Especially after all you’ve done to build up the Sicilians.”

Santino huffs a laugh. “You and I never met before today, Elio, so forgive me if I find your concern for my personal sensibilities rather surprising.”

It’s a wonder that anyone looks surprised when Santino trips them into a bear trap like that. Then again, Elio isn’t that bright.

“Do you know what I think, Elio?”

Elio doesn’t have the first damn clue what Santino thinks, and no guess will take him within the same city limits. He’s at least bright enough to get that far. So instead, he braces himself. “Sir?”

Santino looks him up and down, just long enough to make Elio antsy. “I asked you why you think I’m here, and you said _Bianca_ on instinct. And then you caught yourself and said _the Sicilians_ , because you would rather have this be about the Sicilians even though you clearly think it’s about Bianca. How am I doing so far?”

Hitting the nail on the head, by the look on Elio’s face.

“Well?”

“She’s your cousin.” Now, finally, Santino’s reached the bit of the splinter that’s buried under Elio’s skin and pricking him every which way he moves.

Santino arches an eyebrow, his eyes expressionless as if he doesn’t know the meaning of the word _cousin_. “I’m the High Table seat because I don’t allow blood to factor into the best possible outcome. I told you. I’m here because the Palermo police commissioner called. Not Bianca.” Two subtleties and two words of pure bullshit, not that Elio is sharp enough to catch any of it.

Sure enough, Elio relaxes. “Then we’re on the same page.”

“No, we’re not.” Elio stiffens immediately, his face twitching in a confused furrow. “You want this to be about the Sicilians, but to you this has always been about Bianca. And I do not appreciate when associates lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, sir,” Elio says quickly, before his father can shut him up. “The Sicilians—”

“I know what’s been happening with the Sicilians.” _I don’t need a child to educate me_ goes unsaid but not unheard.

“Then you know what they’ve been saying. They think they don’t need you anymore.”

Which just goes to show how little the Sicilian associates understand about the way of things, and the flash of deadness in Santino’s eyes says as much. “Do I look like I care what Sicilian krill have to say about me?”

Elio’s teeth click shut.

“You said it yourself. I am the Camorra. And regardless of whatever erroneous beliefs the bottom of the Sicilian food chain may have about their dependence on the Camorra, local Cosa Nostra concerns are Vincenzo Sangallo’s problem, not mine. So I’m going to ask you again, and this time I want you to think about the answer. Why am I here?”

Elio doesn’t think, which is what they wanted him to do. “Not Bianca.”

“No.”

“Not the Sicilians.”

“No.”

Except Elio didn’t think beyond those two options and he doesn’t know what to do with them no longer on the table.

Santino waits.

“The…Camorra?”

 _Well, at least he has two brain cells to rub together_ , John thinks.

“Yes.” Santino’s eyes narrow. “Specifically, the clans ignoring orders because an ugly breakup let them think unnecessary fights with the Cosa Nostra are the best way to make themselves useful.”

John’s never seen someone flinch and bridle at the same time, but apparently Elio is full of surprises. “I know it’s a tricky situation. But we have things under control. We can manage the Sicilians.”

He’s missed the point completely, and that does not impress Santino. “I do not call public cockfights under control. Benedetta and Silvio made our stance on the matter quite clear.”

Two of the wrong names to say. “They’re her parents. They’re always going to take her side.”

“Elio,” Roberto snaps.

Santino’s cool gaze fixes on Roberto. “I told you to get this situation in hand weeks ago.”

“We do have it in hand.” Roberto’s gaze flits to Elio to glare him into silence before shifting back to Santino, a sign of weakness he should never display with Santino watching.

Santino studies Elio for a moment, then sighs. “I’d like a word with Elio in private, please.”

Roberto’s face closes in suspicion immediately. “Anything he needs to say to you he can say in front of me.” In other words: _he’s not talking to you alone at risk of making it worse for himself_.

“I’d like to hear Elio’s version of the story.” In translation: _I want to hear what he says when you’re not listening_.

“He can tell his version of the story with me here.” Except his eyes flash on John as he says it.

Santino doesn’t roll his eyes. Barely. “Roberto, if I wanted Baba Yaga to deal with this, I wouldn’t waltz him with me through the front door.” Which just goes to show that Roberto Affini doesn’t know Santino at all, because anyone who knows Santino knows he would waltz Baba Yaga through the front door ten minutes before sending him back to massacre just to taunt them with the idea that they’re safe.

Elio, in a frankly stunning display of intelligence, looks nervous at the suggestion that Baba Yaga could be called upon to clean up his messes.

Roberto studies Santino for a moment and then comes to a decision. “Just Sameen in the room with you.” As if he thinks Sameen couldn’t tear Elio apart in three minutes flat. Misogynistic prick.

Santino is not impressed by that either, but then again, having John outside presents an opportunity they were hoping Roberto would offer. “Just Sameen. We won’t be long.”

Roberto stands and looks at John. _You first_ , his face says. John studies him for a beat too long until Roberto’s nerve cracks, because if Santino’s going to be stuck in a room with Elio Affini, he might as well have something to laugh at beforehand. John sees a flicker of amusement in Santino’s eye and a flicker of real fear in Elio’s and promptly steps into the hallway, holding the door open for Roberto to follow.

He emerges just in time to hear a hissed conversation down the hall. “What the hell are you doing texting that girl?” Here lies the venom Isabella couldn’t direct at Santino.

“Bianca’s trying to help.” That must be Gabriele Affini, Elio’s teenage brother.

“I know all about her _help_. Calling her cousin down to clean up after her when she got bored, same as always.” It’s a good thing Santino can’t hear Isabella or he would tear her tongue out on principle. But Roberto, not Santino, is the one who steps through the door and hears the conversation further back in the house. And though John is good at arranging his features to make it seem like he’s not paying attention, Roberto isn’t stupid enough to think his luck is that good, because he quickly pulls the door shut behind him and vanishes down the hall to get his wife and second son to shut up.

“Bianca told him to toe the line. It’s Elio’s fault he picked fights with the Sicilians. If he had listened to her, Santino wouldn’t be down here.”

“You are not stupid enough to fall for that,” Isabella snaps, even though Gabriele apparently is, “and do not take her side over your brother with that man here.” She says _that man_ the way most people say _the Devil_ , as if afraid to give him power by speaking his name.

“He’s already here,” Roberto hisses as he reaches them, clearly wary of John in the hall. As if Ares can’t hear every word they say anyway. “If we’re lucky Elio can clean this up quickly and quietly before Santino changes his mind about wanting it that way. I don’t want to hear another word about Bianca and I don’t want you talking to her anymore.”

“This isn’t Bianca’s fault.”

Roberto smacks Gabriele upside the head. “And Bianca’s the only thing you can think about. So get fucking focused.”

Roberto and Isabella shift elsewhere to strain to hear Elio’s conversation with Santino, but Gabriele doesn’t. John arranges his poker face and waits.

Sure enough, a teenaged version of Elio Affini appears in the hallway clearly not expecting anyone to be there. John pretends not to notice him in favor of inspecting a collection of family photos on the wall, the better to see Gabriele’s unfiltered reaction. He freezes, which was expected. He doesn’t turn tail, though, which is what the boys thought the smarter Affini brother would do. Instead, he quickly inspects John and speaks up. Quietly, so that his parents can’t hear him. “Hey. You’re John Wick, right?”

John turns to look at him with blank eyes. Gabriele freezes, but he doesn’t quail. John keeps his voice quiet so Elio can’t hear him from the other side of the door. “You’re Elio’s brother?”

It’s a calculated statement. The text message exchanges they reviewed last night show Gabriele doesn’t like just being Elio’s brother, especially with anything remotely related to Bianca. Sure enough, he stands a little straighter. “Gabriele.”

John hums and looks at him a beat longer before returning to his inspection of the family photos.

Sure enough, he has Gabriele’s attention, because Gabriele doesn’t take the opportunity to flee. “You’re here with—with Signor D’Antonio, right? To tidy things up?”

He stopped himself from saying _Santino_. Apparently the Devil’s power feels more real when his favorite reaper is standing in your hallway inspecting a photo of you making a sand castle at age five. “Looks like.”

“What does that mean? For Bianca and Elio?”

John sighs like the whole thing is a chore. Like he’d gladly be done with it already if all involved parties would agree to play along. “Whatever the situation demands. But given the choice, Santino would prefer the clean option. Everyone gets along. Business as usual.”

Gabriele bites his lip and glances at the door. “Look, Elio can be stupid, but he wants to make this right.”

If Elio is anything like Iosef Tarasov, and John is certain he is, his version of making it right will only make things worse. “You want to help him?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

And like Iosef Tarasov, he won’t be able to help himself. John glances at the door to as if he hasn’t been able to hear Santino the whole time, glances back at Gabriele and lowers his voice like he’s saying something he shouldn’t. “Then get him and Bianca to make their peace. And keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t get in any more trouble.”

Gabriele nods, only to jump when John moves. The living room door opens to reveal Santino and Sameen, Roberto and Isabella appearing in the hallway as if summoned. John falls into place on Santino’s other side as he turns to face Elio. “Depending on what we find today, I’ll give you instructions in the morning. And then you’ll have your chance to impress me.”

Elio looks relieved, the moron. “Yes, sir.”

“Remember what I said in the meantime.”

“Stay in the house and stay out of trouble.”

Santino does so love it when his parrots chirp the right way. “And since I can’t count on you and Bianca to interact without giving me a migraine yet, kindly refrain from communicating with each other between then and now, would you?”

“Yes, sir.” As if Elio could help himself when presented with the right opportunity.

“I’ll be leaving two of my boys with you for the night,” Santino informs Roberto and Isabella, “to make sure Elio stays put.” Actually, their job is to make sure he and Gabriele leave, but that’s neither here nor there. “They’ll accompany you to see me in the Continentale in the morning.”

“Of course.” Roberto looks relieved, the moron.

“Well then,” Santino turns to John with a brilliant smile, “care for a bit of housekeeping?”

John opens the front door.

“Good hunting?” he asks when they’re safely in the car.

Santino’s smile twists into a laugh that will end poorly for Elio. “He’ll dance marvelously. So I suppose it’s time to get the rest of the ballet corps in formation.”

That’s the easy part. Fortunately for the rest of the ballet corps, they’re eager to follow Santino’s marching orders and equally eager to have the Affinis sit down and shut up. Or at least, they don’t want the Affinis to be the reason Santino’s wrath falls on them. It’s not difficult housekeeping, but it’s at least engaging. Particularly because it’s punctuated by Ares’s handiwork with the star-crossed shitshow, which blossoms into proper theatre by the time they return to the Continentale for dinner.

The Affini brothers get into an ugly fight about Bianca and fixing things, which is exactly what Santino hoped. They do it in earshot of their parents, which is even better. Roberto shouts at them to pull their heads out of their asses, which is unlikely to happen. Isabella comes up with creative curse words in connection to Bianca, which is just funny.

They get an hour of respite and not-so-quiet contemplation. Then Ares gets busy.

Bianca and Gabriele have been texting each other all day. Well, technically, they’ve both been texting Ares thinking they’re texting each other, and Ares’s replies to either side aren’t a precise translation of the original, but they don’t know that. By the time they reach evening, Ares has two conversations going with Bianca and Gabriele that are completely dissociated from each other. Fortunately, they both have people sitting on top of them all day and thus never get the bright idea to do something that would outpace Ares’s improvisational powers, like call each other.

So when the real Bianca slips out of her bed and Ares puts her feed on a loop and erases her progress out of the compound before she ever gets there, when Valentine calls them in the car to relay all of that information as they pull to a stop outside a lesser-known entrance to the Capuchin Catacombs, Santino smiles a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile.

“Sounds like our cue.” He offers John his arm as Sameen opens the gate. “Care for an evening stroll?”

John elects not to comment and instead picks up the heavy case from the trunk and tucks the spare keys in his pocket, along with a comm in one ear.

Santino just grins as John takes his arm. “You boys know where you need to be?”

“Loud and clear,” Aristide says. He sounds entirely too excited about this.

“Valentine will help give you instructions. In the meantime,” he steps down the stairs and tugs John with him, still grinning all the while, “we have a date in a chapel.”

“And here I was worried we were moving too fast,” John says mildly, hearing Santino’s laughter rattle off the walls.

“Leave the car parked and keep your ear on the comms. Keep the other car out of sight ready to go near the Chapel,” Sameen says. Then the gate clicks shut behind them.

The catacombs are lit at intervals with lamps, but only enough to see another lamp a ways off. Not the lamps of the tourist sections, either—dim yellow battery-powered work lights left behind by kids who decided to creep down to the forbidden tunnels to party where the living city couldn’t hear them. But the boys already made sure no one was in the catacombs, so their only company is the rows of gaping, mummified dead watching them pass as if preparing to reach out their skeleton fingers and switch the lights off. The boys talk in their ears periodically, but down here, it’s harder to attach it to its logical source.

“You really know how to romance a guy,” Sameen mutters, swatting a cobweb out of her face.

“I’m not the moonlit walk type.” It shouldn’t be reassuring that Santino knows where he’s going, but such is John’s life these days.

“Your fun doesn’t usually involve people who are already dead,” John replies, stepping around a mummy leaning forward against the arch as if preparing to tell a secret.

Santino’s laugh echoes against the walls. “You say that like you’re skeptical.”

“She’ll never fall for it. She was already watching you at the house.”

Santino stops him in a pool of light as they reach a tourist section, the yellow light transforming his face into sharp angles and shadows where his eyes ought to be. His hand as he pulls John up the step is warm, though. “I told you I would show you how much I’ve missed you.”

“Who says I don’t want to do the same?”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re fucking adorable,” Sameen snaps. “Can we leave the medieval morgue now?”

They don’t have to go far—the stairs to the Norman Chapel are a few feet away, and though the door is locked, the Continentale help desk is, as ever, an investment worth every last coin. It lets them out in a side passage off the altar, dimly lit by the moonlight and the last smoldering red candles as Valentine warns them Bianca is two blocks away. Sameen takes her cue to trot to the front door and unlock it, slipping outside to take a post out of sight and keep an eye on the street. Leaving John and Santino alone, not yet visible from the Chapel as John sets the heavy case down and pulls on gloves.

“Last chance to take your bets,” Santino murmurs, his eyes sparkling. “My money’s on Bianca.”

“My money’s on Bianca not falling for it.” John presses close as he stands to stay out of sight.

Santino presses closer than needed to stay out of sight, his face warm against John’s shoulder. “Have a little faith in my talents.”

“I don’t need faith,” John breathes, hearing Sameen’s warning in his ear.

The door opens and the hinges creak, a pair of footsteps padding over the tiles. “Santino?”

Santino stays pressed against John but no longer placid, coiled to move as they shift back into the shadows at the sound of Bianca’s approaching footsteps.

John half-expected to see Khoshekh padding alongside her like some sort of witch’s familiar, but there’s no magic in Palermo. Just Bianca, whose black clothes are far better suited to the memento mori figures littering the Chapel than her parents’ house. Unlike this morning, Bianca tried to trap her curls into submission in a bun as if to make herself vanish. They still look like they’re waiting for their cue to turn to snakes and dive hissing for someone’s eyes, and Bianca’s footsteps sound like a loaded spring. Her face is somehow blank yet wavering, as if watching someone flick through channels of static with occasional sound and color. “Hello?”

Santino stays.

Bianca rolls her eyes. “Fashionably late, you melodramatic shit.” She glances in the direction of the passage to the catacombs, and for a moment John thinks she’ll walk right up to the altar and spot them. She doesn’t. Instead, she stops alongside the front pew and takes a breath of the night air, still carrying a lingering tint of incense.

 _Incoming_ , Sameen hisses over the comms.

The door opens. Bianca laughs. “Do you have any idea what time it is? I was starting to get worried.”

“Sorry,” comes the laughing reply. “It was a bitch and a half trying to slip out.”

Bianca freezes and whirls to find Elio stepping into the Chapel and between the pews toward her. And thus their theatre for the night begins. “ _Fuck_ , Elio, what are you doing here?”

Elio falters. He thought he’d get a warmer welcome. “You said you wanted to talk.”

The channel-flicking isn’t there anymore. And this, John thinks, is when the entire thing falls apart. When Bianca’s face clouds in confusion and she asks what the hell Elio is talking about, because she never said any such thing. She hasn’t talked to him at any point all day, even though Elio thinks he’s been talking to her since the early evening after Gabriele prodded him to stop being an asshole and make things right.

But Bianca’s face doesn’t cloud in confusion. Instead, there’s panic. “It doesn’t matter.” She glances in the direction of the altar again and moves to step past Elio. “You need to get out of here.”

“Hey.” Elio catches her wrist as she tries to shove him back. He’s more than a foot taller than she is and her one-handed shove has all the efficacy of a leaf shoving a tree. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Bianca yanks her wrist free and shoves him again. “Get out of here before someone sees you.”

“Who’s going to see?” Elio gestures to the empty pews, a joking smile forming on his face. “It’s the witching hour.”

“ _Go_ , Elio.”

Elio doesn’t go. “You said you wanted to talk.”

Bianca sighs a growl. John holds his breath for Bianca to interrogate Elio, but instead, she says, “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Look, I know I fucked up with the Sicilians. But I can fix this.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Bianca snaps, throwing another wary glance around the Chapel. “That ship sailed. Santino’s already here. There’s nothing to fix.”

“I talked to him earlier today.”

Bianca looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Did you now?”

John cuts Santino a look. Santino presses him into the wall. _Stay. Wait_.

“Yes.” Elio’s voice drops to a soothing tone. “He just wants to clean up with the Sicilians and get the clans in line.”

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of Bianca’s toes to hit Elio in the face. “What did you think was going to happen? That Santino was going to blow into town and give you some action hero mission to magically fix everything with the Sicilians so you could sweep me off my feet?”

Elio doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Bianca buries her face in her hands and scrubs at her eyes, looking nervously around Elio at the shadows around them. “There are so many bigger problems right now. Do you really think he gives a fuck about you and me?”

Elio catches her by the shoulders. “Then we deal with the bigger problems until he’s gone.”

Bianca shoves his hands off. “You don’t get it, do you? That’s not how it works with Santino. You either do what he wants or you pray he doesn’t notice you.”

“You’re his favorite. He adores you.”

“You think that matters?” Bianca snaps. “He doesn’t give a fuck about hurting anyone as long as it gets him what he wants. So go home and keep your head down and let me deal with him.”

She turns toward the altar only for Elio to catch her and spin her back around. “Look, I know you’re scared.”

Bianca breaks his grip and takes a step back, her eyes blazing. “I’m not scared. I’m just done. I’m done with you, I’m done with the same old bullshit, and I want you to go away.”

“You said—”

“ _I lied_.” It comes out as a snarl, except Bianca throws another wary glance toward the corridor where John and Santino are hiding. “Now leave me the fuck alone _._ ” 

Elio’s face darkens and he looks up at the altar. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” Bianca steps forward and pushes as hard as she can to shove Elio back a step. “Just leave.”

“Be careful,” John exhales against Santino’s face as he straightens.

He just smiles, breathing back, “Never.” Then he steps out of their hiding place to walk in front of the altar to pause at the praying skeleton inlaid in the tile. “Bianca?”

Bianca’s eyes widen to half her face as her head whips over her shoulder toward Santino, her voice taking a frantic pitch. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Elio’s face hardens as he glances between Bianca and Santino. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I could ask you the same question.” Santino’s tone is low and dangerous as a dangling razor blade. “I thought I put you on house arrest.”

Bianca throws her body weight at Elio. He’s got seventy pounds on her and no inclination to move, so all it does is leave Bianca stumbling back. “Leave. _Now_.”

Instead, Elio takes a step toward Santino. “Did you get to her?”

Bianca moves back with him, standing in his way. “No. Just go, please.”

Elio, in true Iosef Tarasov fashion, is not listening. “You son of a bitch. You got to her.”

Bianca keeps moving back with him and standing in the way, as though her blocking his view of Santino will stop him. “Stop it, Elio.”

Santino’s face goes cold and sharp. “Bianca, get away from him.”

Sadly for Bianca, the order only angers Elio further. “Don’t fucking talk to her.”

“I said stop it,” Bianca snaps, trying to block Elio to no avail.

Santino takes a step.

Elio’s eyes flash with murder.

Four things happen in rapid succession.

One: Bianca tries and fails to push Elio back.

Two: Elio reaches to move her out of the way.

Three: Bianca darts forward.

Four: Elio freezes, his mouth opening in a soundless cry of pain as his entire body contracts.

Then Bianca’s arm jerks up and yanks back, blood pouring out of Elio’s gut as her knife comes free. Elio stumbles and falls flat on his back, his head hitting the tiles with an ugly crack he doesn’t feel. Instead, he goes slack and his eyes go dark, staring without seeing at the ceiling. The knife clatters to the floor in the spreading blood, Bianca’s hands covered in red.

“Ohmygod.” Bianca’s white as a ghost, her hands frozen in front of her like she doesn’t know what to do with them now that she used them to gut her boyfriend, blinking tears to track down her face even as blood drips off her hands. “Ohmygod. _Ohmygod_.”

“Bianca.” Santino rests his hands lightly on her arms.

Bianca starts sobbing.

Santino pulls her gently into him. “Shh, Bianca,” he says softly, carrying to John only by virtue of the Chapel’s silence, “it’s alright.”

“It’s not—it can’t—I— _fuck.”_ Bianca just keeps staring at Elio’s body, and staring makes her cry harder. Apparently love wasn’t some such crap after all.

“Breathe, darling,” Santino tells her, meeting John’s eyes over her head.

 _You’re about to have company_ , Sameen says, right on cue.

“Let him through,” John breathes as quietly as he can while making sure Sameen can hear him.

_Buckle your seatbelts._

Santino has almost succeeded in getting through to Bianca when company materializes: Gabriele Affini, no longer being casually rerouted and slowed down by the boys while Bianca and Elio played out their little drama. Which means Gabriele walks in on the scene to find Bianca sobbing, Santino trying to soothe her, and Elio’s body on the floor in a pool of blood with a knife next to him. “What have you done?”

Bianca jumps a foot in the air and whirls wide-eyed toward the sound. “ _Shit_ , Gabriele.” And yet, though her jump shook her loose of Santino’s grip, she doesn’t spring back from her cousin. Instead, she steps directly between Santino and Gabriele.

Gabriele processes who’s on the floor. Then he runs for Elio to land on his knees in the spreading pool of blood, getting it all over him as he tries, without avail, to make sure his brother is still alive. “Bianca what did you do?”

“Gabriele,” Santino steps around Bianca, taking a step toward him. “Let’s all just stay calm.”

Gabriele’s gaze swings up to Santino and hardens as soon as it lands. “This is your fault.”

“Gabriele,” Santino repeats in his most soothing tone, only to step back and push Bianca behind him when Gabriele’s face twists into a snarl and he picks up the knife from the floor to point it at Santino as he stands.

“This is your fault, you son of a bitch.”

“Gabriele,” Santino repeats, walking himself and Bianca carefully backward, Gabriele stepping to follow as soon as he does. “This is just a misunderstanding.”

“You sick _fuck_ ,” Gabriele hisses, following where Santino leads with the knife pointing at him. “You never gave a fuck about fixing anything. You just want your fucking games.”

“It was an accident,” Santino says, taking another step back. Leading Gabriele right in front of John’s hiding place. “Just take a breath. We can figure this out.”

“ _Burn in hell_ ,” Gabriele snarls, his eyes blazing. “Burn in hell, you—”

He doesn’t have time for another curse, because John flies out of the shadows the moment Gabriele passes close. The knife flies from Gabriele’s hand to clatter across the floor and John takes Gabriele down with gloved hands covering his mouth and nose, pinning him down and meeting his terrified gaze dead-on until Gabriele stops struggling.

Bianca dives for Gabriele as soon as John steps away, checking a pulse in his throat. She sags in relief to find he’s alive only to see Elio again. Then she stumbles to stand and collapses sideways into a pew, her bloody hands out in front of her.

“Bianca?”

Bianca doesn’t look up as Santino picks his way around the Affinis to sit down next to her.

“Bianca?” Santino says quietly, as if not to startle her. “You alright?”

Bianca looks like someone wrung out her insides with a clenched fist, staring at Elio with red eyes. “What did I do?”

Santino rests a hand on her elbow. “He was going to attack. You reacted. That’s all.”

Bianca shakes her head. “Gabriele won’t see it that way. Roberto won’t see it that way.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How does that not matter? Roberto will be out for my head.” Bianca squeezes her eyes shut, a fresh round of tears tracking down her face. “He’ll look for fights. Mamma and Pappa can’t afford that with the clans watching.”

“None of that will happen.”

“The clans will capitalize. The Sicilians won’t tolerate it. Vincenzo won’t tolerate it. All because—”

“Bianca.” Santino wraps an arm over her shoulders. “None of that will happen.”

“ _How_?” Bianca wails. “Elio’s dead and Gabriele saw and we can’t just—” She doesn’t clarify what they can’t just, just bursts into tears all over again.

The arm around her shoulder tugs and pulls her into Santino. He shushes her, murmuring soothing nothings and smoothing her hair. Then, when he’s let her work some of her panic out of her system, Santino says softly, “I can fix this. If you ask me to.”

Bianca blinks and looks up at Santino, finding him waiting steady in the dark. “You can’t get involved in this.”

“Why?”

“Roberto will turn on you, not my parents. He’ll make the other clans afraid you’ll wipe them out just to keep the Sicilians in line. If he knows you’re involved…” Bianca jolts mid-sentence and looks back at Gabriele. “Gabriele saw you here. He thinks it’s your fault.”

“Look at me, darling.” Bianca follows the hand at her jaw gently pulling her to look up. “They’ll never know we were here. They’ll never even look.”

Bianca searches his face, watching as she was pretending not to at the house. John prays this isn’t the moment her mind slows down enough to question. Happily, it isn’t. “How?”

“Let me worry about that.” He takes one of her hands, getting blood all over him in the process. “Do you trust me?”

Up until that speech to Elio, John thought she did. But to his surprise, Bianca nods and hugs her cousin. A real one, getting blood all over his shirt in the process. And when Santino hugs her back, Bianca holds on.

“Sameen?” Santino calls over Bianca’s head. He smooths Bianca’s hair with his clean hand as Sameen steps inside. “Sameen will get you cleaned up and take you home. I’ll see you in the morning with your father as planned.”

Bianca takes a breath and straightens to stand. She’s holding up admirably, all things considered. Tomorrow morning may be another story, but that’s tomorrow morning’s problem.

Sameen eyes Elio on the floor and wisely elects not to comment. “You need a hand in here?”

“No.” If even Sameen is impressed, the boys would ruin everything as soon as they set foot in the Chapel. “Tell the boys to fan out, make sure we don’t get any visitors. We’ll meet at the Continentale when we’re done.”

“Thanks,” Bianca murmurs. Most people wouldn’t have the nerve to look Santino in the eye by now, but then, Bianca is full of surprises.

Santino smiles. “Get some sleep, darling.” And so the Chapel door closes and Bianca and Sameen exit stage center, leaving John and Santino alone for the first time in hours. And this time, when Santino smiles at John, it’s a real one. “Didn’t I tell you I’d give us some fun?”

“You’re incorrigible,” John replies, though his tone is unmistakably fond.

Santino stands and steps over Gabriele Affini to kiss John with an open mouth, still smelling of the catacombs and blood. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Seems we have a lot of work to do.”

“Guess we should get busy then.”

Santino hums and kisses him again, getting blood on John’s face when he reaches up to hold on.

But when John returns with the heavy black case, Santino stops him. “I think it’s my turn to put on a show. Since you were so spectacular in Florence.”

John figured their little theatre was the show. “You have something in mind?”

Santino’s hand rests on John’s chest, still sticky with blood. “Showing you how much I’ve missed you.”

It probably says something about John’s life that there’s a dead kid three feet away and all he can feel is a warm hum of anticipation and not a single drop of regret. “Sounds like fun.”

Santino chuckles as he takes the case and holds out a smaller kit from Flora. “Can you manage Gabriele?”

John replies, “Is that a rhetorical question?” just for the laugh he gets in return. So he shifts Gabriele out of the way as Santino hums _Tosca_ in a warm baritone that embraces John in the dark, picking up one of the knives.

It takes several hours. Flora gave them excellent drugs, so _manage Gabriele_ is more like a nurse checking an IV line with the majority of his attention devoted to making sure Gabriele looks right. And for all Santino’s fastidiousness, managing Elio’s body is a rather messy affair. They’re both covered in blood and gore by the time Santino finishes, his laughter as bright as the sun even as they cut back through the catacombs and into the night streets.

Sameen drops the paper next to Santino's coffee at nine the following morning in the Continentale suite displaying the photo on the front page: a corpse mutilated into an enormous heart, waiting to greet the priest and the flock when they unlocked the chapel for six a.m. Mass, along with a freshly woken Gabriele, incoherent and covered in blood. "Looks like the news crews arrived the same time the police did."

"It seems so." As though they didn't discreetly tip off a journalist to be present with a camera that morning. Or leave one of the boys behind to tip off the right cops. Santino sips his coffee, inspecting the photo as if admiring an arrangement of flowers.

As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door. Silvio and Bianca, surrounded by Silvio’s bodyguards. He’s wearing the poker face that once served Giovanni D’Antonio well, no small feat considering how pleased he must be that the clusterfuck with the Affinis somehow shook out in his daughter’s favor.

Bianca is…odd.

Her black clothes stick out like a sore thumb in the Continentale’s bright colors, her curls let loose like she forgot they were attached to her head and her arms wrapped around herself now that they’re in the hallway instead of the crowded lobby. And where Silvio’s face is one of cool, collected reserve, Bianca’s is even harder to read, not because she’s wearing a poker face but because she doesn’t seem to know what to feel and is instead flickering through a series of emotions as if rapidly changing TV channels, trying to minimize the movement of her facial muscles in the meantime. She seems to be trying not to cry.

Silvio studies John. John’s grateful he hasn’t had coffee yet and thus doesn’t have to think too hard to make his face blank. Still, Silvio doesn’t seem that interested in unearthing anything from John, instead looking to Santino beyond him. “Have you seen the news?”

“Sameen just showed me the photo,” Santino replies with a sober face as if he wasn’t just admiring his own handiwork. “What happened?”

“They found Gabriele Affini in the Norman Chapel this morning with a mutilated body. It’ll take a while to find out who it is, but…Elio Affini is missing.”

Bianca curls in tighter on herself, staring at the floor.

“Christ. How are you holding up, darling?” To anyone who didn’t know where he was last night, Santino sounds like the picture of a concerned older brother.

Bianca bites her lip. Then she dives to hug Santino. She’s only there for a second before she remembers where they are. “Sorry.”

Santino tightens his grip. “It’s alright.”

Bianca unclenches and exhales. But when she pulls back and hugs her arms back around herself to turn to her father, she’s dry-eyed. “Can we have a minute?”

“Take all the time you need.” It’s a gentler sentence than John thought Silvio D’Antonio could produce. Then again, Silvio is the D’Antonio brother who’s actually capable of parenting his children.

But when Silvio nods for one of his bodyguards to step inside after Bianca, she shakes her head. “Please, Pappa, it’s fine. It’s Santino.” Then, on second thought, “It’s the Continentale.”

Silvio eyes Santino, but he nods and gestures for his bodyguards to follow. “We’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”

The suite door closes, and Santino leads Bianca back to the table, asking one of the boys to get her coffee. She lets him settle her in a chair facing him. She doesn’t comment when coffee appears at her elbow. She doesn’t comment on the newspaper on the table either. She just watches Santino.

She doesn’t cry.

Instead, the odd channel-flicking sensation gets even more disorienting. An emotion is gone as soon as John registers it, replaced by another that’s gone in the blink of an eye. And when Santino offers a gentle, “You alright, darling?” Bianca doesn’t reply.

She just watches Santino.

Santino watches her.

The boys exchange nervous glances.

John counts how many hours passed between murdering Elio and showing up on Santino’s doorstep. Wonders how many of them Bianca spent turning over the day’s events in her head. Wonders what she could have possibly come up with or how much it matters now that the cage has already closed around her. Wonders if he’s giving Bianca too much credit.

Finally, Bianca speaks. “You played me.”

Santino’s mask of brotherly concern doesn’t waver. “Did I?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Santino.”

A smile creeps on Santino’s face even as he stops masking. “When did you figure it out?” Bianca can see John, so he doesn’t give Santino a look meaning _what are you doing_ , but he’s tempted.

Bianca seems even less certain of what to feel without Santino’s masks offering social cues, and the channel flicking sensation gets faster. Even so, her voice is steady when she says, “When you said Ares was cleaning up a mess in Belgrade. Or at least, I knew you were in a mood to have your fun after that idiot Moreau. I didn’t know what your game was until Elio showed up.”

Well.

Fuck.

For a moment, they stare at each other.

Bianca mutters, “You mother _fucker_ ,” in an incredulous tone. John wonders how far sideways this can go.

Santino just laughs. “I’m a lot of things, darling. I’m not that.”

“Asshole.” Bianca’s face breaks into a delighted grin as she hits Santino lightly on the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have had more fun with it.”

And while the channel flicking sensation is still there, it’s suddenly obvious Bianca wasn’t holding back tears in the hallway. She was holding back laughter.

“I wanted to see what you’d do,” Santino says airily, his face widening into a smirk. “And I needed you to be convincing when the police come to ask you questions.”

“Fuck you. I thought I was fantastic.” The channel flicking stops and Bianca’s face crumbles into a perfect replica of last night staring at Elio’s body, tears and snot and all, and when she says, “ _ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod_ ,” it’s in a perfectly tremulous replica of last night. It’s deeply disorienting to see it immediately fall away as she gives Santino a flat look, given that there are still tears and red eyes she’s wiping away with her sleeve, sniffling to clear her nose. Especially because the channel flicking is back. “It’s not every actor that can cry on command, you know.”

John’s…honestly kind of impressed. “Darling, you were Oscar-worthy,” Santino says with no small amount of delight, holding out a napkin. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Bianca takes it and blows her nose. “How do you think I played Elio and Gabriele against each other since June?” She tilts her head, studying the newspaper photo and glancing up at John with a curious, assessing look. The same watching she did at her parents’ house, no longer filtered by walls having ears.

“Are you sorry?”

“Couldn’t have happened to nicer guys.” Bianca scowls at the photo. “Fuckers thought they could own me and were pissed to learn they couldn’t.”

She looks up at Santino’s warm laugh. “No one can own you without your consent.”

“Somehow, I suspect Domenico and Carmine and Vincenzo and a great many other men would protest that.”

Santino smirks as if letting her in on a secret. “As you discovered with the Affini brothers, the secret to successful manipulation is that you’ll always keep someone closer if they actually want to stay. Domenico and Carmine and Vincenzo can pretend for the sake of the masses, but I own them because they want to be owned.”

Bianca tilts her head, studying him. “Does that mean you own me?”

“Depends on whether you want to be,” Santino replies, studying her back.

Bianca smiles a smile made to eat men’s hearts out, her eyes glittering. “I gutted him, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Santino looks rather proud. “Out of curiosity, what was the appeal?”

“Of Elio?” Bianca scowls again. “There wasn’t. He and Gabriele kept fucking things up for Mamma and wouldn’t listen to anyone to fix it and their idiot father wouldn’t get them in check. I knew how to make them more efficient. As it happens, both of them mooning after me made it easy.” She bats her eyes and gags.

Santino’s smile says he already knew that answer. “You’re bored to death down here, aren’t you?”

Bianca winces. “Am I that obvious?”

“Afraid so, darling. Well,” he allows, “to me anyway. But then, I’ve known you since you were three days old. And now here you are, all grown up and showing initiative.”

Bianca huffs a laugh, though it’s stripped of her earlier humor. “Look where that got us. I wanted to get them under control and instead you had to come down and clean up after me. You must think I’m an idiot. Flora too.”

“Not at all. I will admit Flora was disappointed it was Elio and not one of your girlfriends, but then again, men are known to be disappointing.”

Bianca snorts, a grin creeping back on her face. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

“Entirely too well.” He shoots John a look over the rim of his coffee mug, his eyes sparkling. “We were mildly disappointed I didn’t get to swoop in with the gay cousin card, but we’re not disappointed in you, and we certainly don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, well,” Bianca glances at the door, where Silvio waits to meet her in the lobby, her grin slipping away. “We’re not all Santino D’Antonio.”

Santino gives her a flat look. “You say that as though the entire world knows about me, and you and I both know thirteen people among the collected D’Antonio and Rosalia families have a damn clue. Never mind the rest of the world.”

“That’s because the important ones think you’ll give in and let Marella find you a wife one of these days, the handful further down the totem pole aren’t about to risk Flora and Caroline’s wrath by gossiping, and none of the above have ever mentioned it to their kids or their underlings.” Bianca rolls her eyes hard enough for permanent injury. “Homophobic pricks. And you know that’s not what I’m talking about. They can’t burn you at the stake without losing everything and they know it. I already have too many cards stacked against me to afford throwing that in their faces.”

“The way I see it, nothing’s a disadvantage unless you make it one.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re the fucking High Table seat. Even if you weren’t, you’re still a man even if you’re not a straight one. You and I both know finocchi are the one thing they hate worse than women. Sadly for me, I’m both.”

“I wouldn’t know what it’s like to be looked at that way, but I do know a certain kind of being looked at. If you already know they’re going to look at you a certain way, then you already know they’re not paying attention. And like I said,” Santino rests his hand on hers, his face surprisingly open, “no one can own you without your consent.”

“Thanks.” The small smile Bianca gives him is surprisingly genuine and her voice surprisingly quiet. More importantly, the sensation of watching someone flick through channels is gone, and John sees he was wrong.

Whatever it is about Gianna’s eyes that’s so familiar is ten times stronger in Bianca, and the only reason John can see it now is because Bianca’s no longer hiding it. Gianna’s familiarity lives in her face as a constant undertone rendered muddy and indistinct by running together with other things. Bianca can make hers vanish completely. And while John can now see her channel flicking was a compulsive force of habit that left her flat-footed when Santino gave her nothing to go on, if this is Bianca before she’s mastered her art, she’ll be a sight to behold when she does.

But it’s gone in a blink as Bianca settles back, before John has time to pin down what it is about them that’s so damn familiar. “You still have to deal with Roberto and Vincenzo?”

“Yes,” Santino sighs, sitting back to take a long drink of his coffee, “but given the circumstances, I suspect they’ll both be happy to get it over with quickly.”

Bianca nods. “I’ll make it convincing.”

Santino grins. “I never had any doubt you would.”

Bianca freezes. “Fuck. The texts.”

“The ones on your phone?” Santino nods to her pocket as if letting her in on an excellent joke. “Read them. I think you’ll find they speak for themselves. As will Elio and Gabriele’s phones, once the police get that far.”

Bianca gives him the disbelieving look of a child being let in on a magic trick and pulls out her phone to open her messages. Sure enough, she laughs in delight. “Looks like I’m reading my lines in the elevator. Tell Doria to batten down the hatches for me in a week?”

“And here I was worried you’d finally gotten sick of me.”

“What, and miss a chance to offend Marella’s sensibilities on your behalf? Not a chance in hell.” Bianca flashes an evil grin reserved exclusively for little sisters. “Besides, _someone_ is ancient and turning thirty-eight.”

“Yes.” Santino turns blue eyes on her made to reel people in. “And I can only assume Flora and Gianna told my favorite cousin what they’re plotting to surprise me with.”

Sadly for him, Bianca knows that look. “And if my favorite cousin thinks I’ll miss the chance to see his face when they surprise him, he’s got another thing coming.”

Santino gives her a dark look. His smile ruins it, though. “See if I help you next time.”

“You love me.”

“Tragically for both of us, the feeling is mutual.”

They both mean it to be cutting. The affection between them gives up the game, though.

Bianca hugs Santino before she leaves, the kind Flora give that knock the breath out of people. John’s not sure he’ll ever get used to seeing Santino hug someone. Still, John’s not stupid. So when Santino closes the door behind Bianca and turns to him looking entirely too smug for anyone’s health, a few gears click into place. “You knew Bianca would figure it out all along, didn’t you?”

Santino grins. “I told you she was too smart to fall for it.”

“One of these days, I’m going to strangle you.”

Santino just laughs. “You say the nicest things.”

It still takes another two hours to finish untangling things. The first hour passes with Silvio and a shaken Roberto. Fortunately, Roberto doesn’t blame Bianca for what happened, though the shock of the morning helps. As does the overabundance of evidence saying Gabriele had some sort of breakdown brought on by stress, jealousy, and a nastier cut of drugs than his typical cocktail, alongside the overwhelming evidence that Bianca had nothing to do with it. As for Silvio, well. Silvio was not born last night, and Silvio has not survived to the age of sixty-five because he’s an idiot. Still, his daughter came out the other end unscathed by Santino’s wrath, and so he leaves with a promise to keep Santino apprised. And if the clan leaders with a lick of sense might pause and whisper among themselves that it’s rather convenient for Gabriele Affini to have a psychotic break and murder his own brother to impress Santino’s favorite cousin after his brother happened to cause trouble with the Sicilians and Santino just so happened to be in town to clean up said trouble, well. It’s just a scary story, after all, and like all good scary stories, it will keep the children frightened in their beds where they belong.

The second hour is with Vincenzo. And while most of it is in Sicilian, John does understand the first sentence that comes out of Vincenzo’s mouth once the suite door closes. “Even for _you_ this is special.”

Still, Vincenzo is pleased with the results, because his underlings are muttering the same thing as the Camorra while their bosses remind them that breaking from the Camorra is financial suicide. Which means they’re all free to go home and focus on New York.

It’s past eleven by the time the boys get the cars, and one of them is a surprise, the gleaming black 1967 Chevy Impala from the house. The one with a strategically large trunk. “You planning on stowing a body?”

“You offering?” Santino smirks and tosses John the keys. “No. We have a long drive. And I see little reason why it has to be boring.”

They have a ten-hour drive, they still have to detour to get Ares, Matteo, Valentine, and Constantine from outside Palermo, and also, none of them slept more than a few hours last night. And with the boys in blank tanks trying to keep up, it’s not the kind of drive that lends itself to fun. But John’s always found long drives soothing, and with Santino there, with Santino close, it feels companionable. Even when they pick up Ares and she clambers in the back with Sameen, signing _it must be fun having a sugar daddy_.

Still, none of them slept for very long last night, so by the time they finally get back to the house, all anyone wants to do is sleep. The keys that keep John’s brain running slip out of place when he turns off the Impala, so he doesn’t register collecting his bag and his gun case, nor does he register where he’s going beyond the fact of Santino walking next to him. Until Santino catches him and asks where he’s going.

Which is when he realizes he’s going to his own room. “To sleep.”

Santino tugs on his arm. “Come in here?”

It takes John’s brain a second to catch on that _in here_ means _the master bedroom_. “To sleep?”

Santino gives him a look. “We’re dead on our feet after a ten-hour car ride and four hours of sleep, so yes, to sleep.”

John scrambles for any available brainpower, but all he gets is radio static. “We don’t. Sleep.”

Santino’s face closes.

“No, it’s just…” What Santino heard is _we don’t sleep, we only fuck_ , and what John means to say is _we don’t share a bed unless we’ve been fucking_ or _we haven’t shared a bed just to sleep since that time with Carmine_ or _that time with Carmine is the only time we’ve shared a bed that wasn’t fucking or protecting you_ but what comes out is, “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me there. To sleep.”

“Why would I ask if I didn’t want you there?” John knows that, logically. He still freezes, and Santino feels it. “Unless you don’t want to be there?”

“I do.”

Santino’s hand halts in the process of pulling away from him, but he doesn’t settle again either. “But?”

But this is the house, not the apartment, and the apartment is temporary because Santino doesn’t actually live there, and John wants to be there, but the difference between the house and the apartment made sharing a bed in the apartment feel safe to do in the moment because of its impermanence and the fact that no one was about to seek out Santino that night, and that’s an important distinction to John that he can’t express without sounding like an asshole or making a big deal out of something that clearly isn’t a big deal to Santino. So what comes out is a halting, “We’ve only ever shared a bed in the apartment. We don’t live in the apartment.”

John succeeded in forcing out that this is important, at least because he said it in Russian instead of Italian. But by the look on Santino’s face, he still sounds like an asshole. “I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m just asking if you don’t want to sleep alone.”

“I don’t.” His throat closes at the thought of going back to it. “Of course I would rather. For anything. If you want me there. That’s not it.”

John does not freeze. John does not get anxious about things. But he’s frozen, and he keeps looking between the two bedroom doors and Santino like he can find the right words to explain why this is important scampering between them, and that processes enough that Santino’s voice is gentle rather than irritated. “Then what is it?”

“I don’t…have weapons.” It sounds idiotic to his own ears, even though he can’t make himself say why that’s important. “Not the weapons in the walls. Mine. In your bedroom.”

Santino looks relieved, as if that’s nothing at all. “You’ve got an entire case in your hands. Bring those. Hell, bring every gun you own for all I care.”

John wants to be relieved too. Except he’s running into the permanence issue. “It’s not about having a case. It’s about having them put away. Out of sight. And it’s your bedroom, not mine.” _Put away_ meaning _hide_ , _your bedroom_ meaning _I haven’t let myself believe this is a good thing I get to keep and I’m trying not to make this a big deal_.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you can bring every gun you own for all I care,” Santino says gently. “And as for it being my bedroom, well. I would be quite happy to have you there as long as you want to be there.”

John takes a breath. Lets it go. Reminds himself that this is not a big deal, that sharing a bed is worth scaling the wall to get there. “Okay.”

Santino smiles a quiet, private smile that’s worth every stilted syllable John had to force out to get there. So he follows Santino back down the hall, telling himself this isn’t a big deal. He knows he’s full of shit when he sets the case down on the dresser and Santino closes the door behind them. He distantly processes Santino tell him, “Doria’s the only one with a key and knows not to use it unless it’s an emergency,” distantly processes Santino casually walk past him to the closet. Vaguely registers Santino casually ask if he wants the bathroom first.

“No, go ahead. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

John wanted that to sound casual. It’s not casual. Mostly because it’s in Russian. So Santino loops back across the room in front of John in a carefully casual way John didn’t want him to use, and answers in Russian, which says he’s being more careful than the nonchalant facade implies. “You can put them anywhere you’d like.”

“I know. Just go ahead in the bathroom. I’ll be done when you’re finished.”

A flicker of a frown breaks through the nonchalant facade. “I’ve seen you hide guns a hundred times. You don’t have to be embarrassed about hiding them in here.”

It’s not embarrassment. “Santino. Please just go in the bathroom. I won’t take long.”

He had this conversation with exactly one other person before, and that time, Marcus was distant for the rest of the night and already gone by morning with neither of them sleeping a second in between. This time, Santino nods and rests a hand on his arm before he goes to the bathroom with the door closed. It’s the touch that lets John hope he hasn’t fucked things up. So he sets a book over the hidden camera in the bookcase and makes quick work of hiding his guns. It’s still a relief that Santino isn’t distant at all when John says it’s alright to come back, that he smiles like he won a prize when he sees John is still there, that falling asleep tangled together feels as natural as breathing.

He blinks awake in the morning sun to find himself in much the same position, wrapped around Santino as much as Santino is curled into him. He met his own eye in the bathroom last night with the ugly thought that he would wake up feeling like an intruder, that the naturalness of waking up in the apartment was a product of its spontaneity. This doesn’t feel like the apartment. The apartment isn’t home. This is home, and this is the one room in the whole place that feels the most like Santino.

It’s not the Klimt on the walls or the small Hart sculpture on the dresser. It’s not the black and gold painting of Godel’s incompleteness theorem above the bed. It’s not the mess of math and economic theory books overflowing the bookcase in various stages of reading as though Santino leaped from one to the next leaving random bookmarks behind. It’s not Santino’s clothes hanging on the door to the closet or his tie cast carelessly aside over the chair or his watch on the nightstand or even the monstrosity of a gradual alarm that clashes with literally everything in the room.

It’s the photographs arrayed around the room, the only place on the property other than Doria’s room that has family photographs. Santino and Flora at two being chased around the courtyard by Flora’s parents, Leo and Amal. Santino and Flora at four under an apple tree in the courtyard wrapped around a woman with big dark eyes and a head of Medusa curls who could only be Massima. Santino and Flora at six next on a couch with his grandmother, Claudia D’Antonio, Flora’s face curled in a snicker at whatever Santino whispered in her ear and Nonna Claudia wearing an indulgent chuckle. Flora and Santino at eight with Flora’s grandmother, Nooran Arafa, making an abominable mess of her kitchen. Flora crushing a snowball in Santino's hair at age thirteen in Switzerland. Santino as a teenager with baby Gianna asleep on his chest and Flora sitting on the floor in front of him sketching. Santino with a solemn one-year-old Bianca on his lap pressing piano keys. Santino with a beaming seven-year-old Gianna in his arms wearing a tutu with Flora laughing alongside them. Santino and Flora dancing in the courtyard with an eight-year-old Gianna caught mid-laugh. Santino bent over a math book with ten-year-old Bianca. Santino and Caroline at eighteen in the London townhouse with math splayed all around them. Caroline and Santino's graduation from LSE with Flora sandwiched between them. Santino and Caroline talking to Dr. Wren in an MIT computer lab. A teenage Bianca and Gianna looking up at the camera in matched Le Rosey gymnastics leotards. Gianna in _Giselle_ , her Albrecht holding her high above the adoring villagers with a laughing smile that lights up the whole stage. Bianca stoic and haunting as Queen Myrtha, suspended in midair in grand jeté as if in flight before the rows of shrouded spirits she raised to make men dance until they die. Gianna between Santino and Flora holding up her art school diploma a few months ago. Bianca with her entire body wrapped around Santino in glee as she waves her Cambridge diploma and much the same photo in her LSE Masters robes. Santino with Caroline and Flora in their own private universe in some long-forgotten party in Flora's ballroom.

John doesn’t like family photos. He usually only sees them after an uncomfortable conversation ending in _you’re sure you want me to kill everyone_? They make him feel the least human out of every common artifact of family life, because he can never once recall anyone pointing a camera at him for the sole purpose of remembering, and looking at other people’s makes him feel like a ghost. Besides, he usually only sees family photos on a certain kind of contract, and the frozen memories seem to laugh at the idea that he could ever have been human enough for someone to want to remember him. Not when he’s the shadow slipping into someone’s house while they sleep to prevent any future moments from becoming frozen memories.

These still make him feel like a ghost. But they also feel like peering into a record of Santino’s life that has little to do with death. A part of him that’s human enough to want to see the faces of his people every morning.

Santino pressing his nose into John’s neck shakes him out of that thought. He lets out a fond laugh low in his chest that Santino burrows into. “You really are a cat.”

Santino hums. “You really know how to woo a man.”

“That’s what coffee is for.”

“Glad you offered.” Which is not to say Santino stops impersonating an octopus.

Or that John makes any effort to extricate himself. “Then they’ll wonder where you are and I’ll be stuck with the wolves on my own.”

“Then stay here where it’s warm.”

Sounds like a fantastic plan to John. Minus the part where he can hear Mischa cooking downstairs, which means Doria will probably knock soon enough.

Santino seems to reach the same conclusion, because he groans. “Fine. I’ll share.”

“Don’t you dare,” John retorts, just for the laugh it gets him.

They walk into the kitchen to find a small collection of people already there—Mischa at the stove, Doria cleaning some peaches on the counter, Sameen and Ares having coffee with Flora, and everyone being too deliberately casual.

“When did you get in?” Santino says to Flora, taking the mug John hands him.

“About twenty minutes ago.” Her grin is not casual, and she hides it behind her espresso cup when Santino turns back.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I have a light day,” Flora says, as though Santino can’t see straight through her, “and I wanted to see how your trip to Florence and Palermo went.”

She says the last bit with raised eyebrows. Santino is not impressed. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“And so’s Bianca,” Flora says, because she can see straight through him. “Awful thing, what happened to Elio.”

“Isn’t it just?” Santino hands John his coffee and takes his seat at the table. “I’m just glad Gabriele turned on Elio instead of Bianca.”

And everyone’s being deliberately casual about the fact that John takes the seat next to Santino to drink his coffee. Except Doria, who stares in unabashed delight at John. And when John finally asks why she's staring, she beams and pats his hand. "You take care of Santino," she says happily, as though John just brought back Jupiter in a jewel box.

Which is around when John remembers that, despite the fact that the master bedroom was locked, the door to his own bedroom was open, the bed unused, and John’s bag and case nowhere in sight. And as soon as they see that click, Flora, Sameen, and Ares howl in laughter. Or at least, Ares wheezes while Flora and Sameen howl like hyenas high on laughing gas.

Bedelia walks into the kitchen, takes one look at Santino and John drinking coffee while Ares, Sameen, and Flora die laughing, and lets out the longest sigh she's let out all year. "Oh thank _god_."

Santino raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I thought I would have to check you into the hospital." She looks John dead in the face. "I was starting to worry you had gone blind."

Ares and Sameen laugh so hard they cry, Flora toasting John with her espresso cup.

As it turns out, everyone had lots on when they would get their shit together. John finds that out from Athos with the usual level of social graces, for which Athos wins a swift smack upside the head from Sameen. Renato and Aristide claim they knew it would all work out fine since Paris. Ares tells them to shut the fuck up and give Doria her winnings. John’s just relieved he doesn’t speak French and therefore has no clue what Yvette, Cosima, and Delphine are giggling about.

Even so, it takes a while to catch on as to why the household is simultaneously excited and skittish around him the same way they were after Nicky Moscone. Specifically, it takes until Sameen recounting what she heard outside the door to the rest of the boys while Ares signs a description of the viciousness of the knives with relish. And then it clicks.

Sameen took Bianca home, the boys were spread out to keep watch, Ares wasn’t even there, and unlike Nicky Moscone’s screening room, there were no camera feeds to hack in the Norman Chapel. No one saw or heard what happened once Bianca left.

They think the heart was John’s handiwork.

Still, they all take Florence and Palermo and the entire day after as heartening signs John and Santino finally worked it out. It’s kind of reassuring to know the entire household is on board with it, if not quite at ease with the gory flourish that accompanied it.

That just leaves two people, who return from London the following afternoon: Caroline and Gianna. Who appear with a bang. Or rather, with Gianna, shouting into the house, “Santino, we’re back! I’m back and I’m taking my sweater off! Taking my sweater off and leaving it on the floor! Leaving it on the floor and walking away from it and next week I’m joining the Five Star party!”

Lo and behold, it gets precisely the response Gianna was hoping for. “I will disown you!”

“See?” Gianna says brightly to Caroline. “I told you I know the fastest way to find him.”

“Color me amazed.” Astonishing how much three words can tell about two weeks in London with Gianna.

“If you went to a party in Palermo without me,” Gianna announces as they appear in the doorway, “you’d better have come back with humiliating stories about Bianca.” Then she gets a proper look at Santino. “Scratch that. I owe Bianca Louboutins.”

Flora’s hiding in blueprints pretending she doesn’t think this is hilarious. _Pretending_ being the operative word. “Why?”

“Because she’s officially the Supreme Witch.” Gianna points to Santino using John as his favorite pillow. “Look at that and tell me that’s not evidence the Imperius Curse is real.”

“Bianca would break her leg in Louboutins,” Santino says mildly, not looking up from whatever models he’s running on his laptop.

“She can magic it better. And don’t think hiding behind other people’s hard-stolen money will get you out of spilling all the sordid details of getting your shit together.”

Thankfully for everyone’s health, Caroline catches her by the collar. “I’ve seen enough of your mug for two weeks and I have numbers to run with Santino while Sebastian brings Yurei. Fuck off.”

Happily, Flora intervenes before Caroline makes Gianna fuck off. “Come on, sweetie. We’ve got plotting to do with Elle.”

“I spent two weeks with your sister in London,” Caroline says flatly before Santino can even ask. “There’s no amount of money you can offer to make me unscramble that feed.”

Santino doesn’t answer that, because John shifted under him to leave the room. Santino raises an eyebrow. John shoots a glance at the laptop. Santino gives him a look. John inclines his head a centimeter toward Caroline. Santino shifts to be even more in the way.

Caroline watches John. They all pretend not to notice.

Naturally, the black phone rings in the library as soon as they settle. Santino looks like he’d like to put the Five Families back in preschool where they belong. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Which leaves John in the living room.

Alone.

With Caroline.

Out of everyone in the house, John was most concerned about Caroline, because Caroline is possessive of Santino the way the tide is possessive of the seashore and no one stays near Santino unless Caroline lets them. And while she and Flora were both hurt and angry when John pulled away from Santino, Flora always took the fact of his staying as evidence that he would come around eventually. Caroline didn’t. Caroline took John staying as though it was an act of personal malice, watching as though waiting for John to shoot Santino between the eyes.

Flora wanted John to stay. Caroline did not.

Caroline doesn’t look up from her typing, so for a split second, John thinks he’ll be safe. He really should know better. “Flora told me about Palermo.”

“Ah.”

“A poetic conclusion, all things considered.”

“Got the clans in line.”

“And everyone afraid of you.”

John shrugs. “Cost of doing business.”

“I suppose. But then, the household is too distracted by the gore and recent historical data to pay attention.”

“Meaning?”

“That I always pay attention.” Caroline looks up at him with eyes of stone. “And I know tableaus are his style, not yours.”

One of the reasons Santino loves Caroline: she never misses anything. “There a reason you’re telling me this?”

Caroline snorts. “He gave you his heart on the Norman Chapel floor. Why do you think?”

One of the other reasons Santino loves Caroline: she’s a master in the art of understated cruelty. “I know you don’t like me.”

Caroline looks at him like he’s a goddamn idiot. “You’re a better match for him than most men. So no, John, I like you. That’s not the problem.”

That’s news to John. “Then what is?”

“You’re not as invested as he is. And you’re going to hurt him.”

She says it with a quiet calm reserved for basic truths of life. _The sky is blue. Santino is mine. You’re going to hurt him_. And while John has always been quietly certain of the fact in the latter sentence, it stings to hear it said out loud. “That’s not true.”

“The last month and a half say otherwise.”

“The last month and a half happened because I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I’ve never been able to keep anything good.” _You of all people would understand that_ , he does not say, because he and Caroline have flashes of understanding different from the kind he has with Flora, first and foremost the tacit agreement never to speak of where they came from cushioned by the comfort of finding one person who does not pity them for it.

“Then why would you ever let him go?” Caroline says it like it’s the worst offense John could have ever committed. “Why would you ever even consider it?”

Their flashes of understanding are different than the kind John has with Flora. Like the long-term consequences of where they came from. “Because I’m not you.”

“Bullshit.” It rings like a whip crack cutting through the air. “You love the same way he and I do, and we don’t love. We want and we take and we possess and we never let go of what we want.”

“I said I’m not you. Not that I don’t love the same way you do.” John lets it roll over him and lets the past wash back to the far corners of his mind with it. “And sometimes not being able to keep anything good means keeping that good thing safe from me.”

Caroline studies him. John’s not sure what she sees. “Who says this time is any different?”

“Hell if I know. But we’re figuring it out. I’m trying to figure it out.”

“And you’re staying.”

“Yes.”

Caroline tilts her head to where the cameras hide. “Even if the world thinks you’re a monster because of him?”

“They already did.”

“Not like this.”

“I was a monster for a long time before he showed up. Doesn’t matter what they think.”

“Even if someone offered your whole life? A chance to not be a monster?”

“I am a monster.” To his surprise, he’s more fine with that than he used to be. “And there’s nothing anyone could offer me that I want.”

That, finally, seems to satisfy Caroline, and she nods once before returning to her work. Then Santino comes back in the room, and they never mention it again. But Caroline is a hair warmer than before.

In a month and change of avoiding Santino, all John really wanted was to go back to how it was before. But this isn’t how it was before. It’s better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I just realized how long this chapter is. I'd say sorry, but then I'd be lying. 
> 
> Don’t judge me for my Leverage jokes. Also, the choice to set this in Palermo was totally based on Palermo being the capital of Sicily and totally not because of that one scene in the Normal Chapel in Hannibal season 3, what are you talking about?
> 
> Bonus points for those of you who noticed Flora’s mother and grandmother’s names are very Middle Eastern (Egyptian, to be exact) which means Flora is half Egyptian. Also, Giselle is a beautiful ballet and you should 5000% watch it, if only for the fantastic latter half in which a mysterious queen of the dead raises the spirits of spurned and heartbroken women from their graves to wreak the vengeance that women everywhere deserve. If nothing else, look up photos of Myrtha and the Willis. 
> 
> Also, Bianca! I love Bianca. After Santino and John, she’s my favorite character in this entire thing. Part of the reason I love her is that she’s a glimpse of what Santino was before he became the finished novel we see here. When he was still becoming. You’ll get to see more of Bianca if I get around to finishing this and writing the sequel (it was supposed to be an epilogue but then somehow acquired a chapter-by-chapter outline and the little fragments turned into 48k, whoops). Give me a shout if you're interested as this thing progresses.
> 
> Oh, and if you’re wondering how Bianca can be 22 and already done with undergrad and a Masters, Cambridge and Oxford undergrad is 3 years and an LSE Masters is one year. French university is the same, which is how Gianna’s 21 and done with undergrad. 
> 
> Hope the Welcome to Night Vale fans appreciated the cameo by my favorite demonic cat, Khoshekh. I imagine that’s what he would look like if he were less, you know, Night Vale. Also, what kind of pet would a D’Antonio-Rosalia child own other than a literal demon from hell?
> 
> Also, bonus points for those of you who thought it was odd that the kids being D’Antonio-Rosalias and Benedetta keeping her maiden name was such a sticking point for Benedetta. Extra bonus points for those of you who noticed that Massima is only ever referred to as Massima Rosalia, not Massima D’Antonio. There is actually a reason for that. It will be directly explained if I get around to writing the sequel to this monstrosity. 
> 
> Fun fact about convincing people: 90% of convincing someone is the listener deciding you’re going to convince them. So when Santino says Vincenzo and Domenico and Carmine and all those other men are in his cage because they want to be, he’s not full of shit. Getting someone to want to buy into manipulation is the sign of a truly masterful manipulator.
> 
> Bianca and Santino’s conversation re: the family and homosexuality is an important and complicated one. They’re not hiding out of shame (hey psychopathy: they don't have any), they’re hiding out of pragmatism, because they live in a world with a specific brand of toxic masculinity partnered with the kind of frantic religiosity that leads people like Carmela Corleone to go to Mass every single day. The thing about the meeting point of misogyny and homophobia is that women have to be literally married to other women to prove they’re not straight (because women are valued via their sexuality in relation to men, see Hannah Gadsby on lesbians not laughing) whereas men constantly have to prove they’re not gay (because being equated to a woman is the worst thing a man could be). I fully believe assassins could not give less of a shit (what are morals when you’re a professional murderer?) but organized crime does. At Santino’s level, organized crime isn’t about theft or money, it’s about power. Gay men of Santino’s generation grew up in the shadow of AIDS, where being gay meant knowing you could either live a false life or live truthfully knowing there was no future in it. I read a piece years ago I’ve never been able to find again (I think it was Harper’s Bazaar?) talking about gay men and San Francisco row homes, essentially saying that what we now view as a stereotype of gay men was borne of a world where domesticity was performative because of the irony and sorrow of a house built for two families now housing two gay men who could never have that kind of future, performing something you could never actually possess. Anyway, melt that together with the world of organized crime still lurking in 17th-century misogyny and you get a world where it’s a pragmatic business decision for Santino not to trumpet his sexuality because he knows it will always stand in his way, that the family will always look down on him for it. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk! And reading to the end of my rambling end note. I salute you.


	14. happiness like a bullet in the back (nothing’s wrong but nothing’s true)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are different, but it's nice. No, actually, it's really, really nice. Barring a minor scuffle with Gianna the morning of Santino's birthday, anyway, but Flora has the party of the year in mind for Santino. More importantly, John has a surprise he's been plotting (with a bit of help from Flora). And when the party arrives, bringing family politics, underworld politics, and Mischa's frightening sense of humor with it, John enjoys the party far more than usual with the knowledge that Santino is his when there's no one there who needs to see it performed. 
> 
> Oh, and Santino has something important to tell John. 
> 
> Or: the one where shit hits the fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a hot second! I've said from the beginning patience is a virtue, and we're hitting a stretch where I ask you to be patient with updates--I keep a lead of at least two chapters fully written in advance of posting and we're hitting a stretch where I have more work to do on upcoming chapters. Be patient, I promise this fic won't be abandoned. I already have solid chunks of every chapter written, and since I was recently informed I'm more verbose than J. R. R. Tolkien, I'm committed out of pride. Also my love of my favorite psychopathic flaming disaster gays. 
> 
> Also, I kindly ask your patience as I make all of this look 100% deliberate. I wrote a few tidbits earlier on that I later realized wouldn't work and have since had to incorporate them seamlessly. Just do a trust fall here and trust that I've done my level best to hide the safety netting. As far as you know, everything here is deliberate.

Somehow, as the week wears on toward Santino’s birthday, John never gets around to moving back to his own room.

It’s…nice.

No, really. It’s really nice.

John never lets himself stay, so he’s never had the quiet pleasure of waking up to find he’s not alone, of having someone else shuffle closer to get comfortable again while they’re still half-asleep, of having someone else trust him enough to be that vulnerable and trusting someone else enough to do the same. He’s woken up with Santino before, but that was always after fucking, when they were both too tired to clean up and he could reassure himself that Santino would not startle him the morning after (the first five times he kept himself awake all night for fear of it, and the sixth time fell asleep by accident only to bolt awake in a shot of adrenaline and spring away and hear Santino grumble _what the fucking fuck are you doing_ and lie about hearing someone calling for him while mentally reassuring himself that Santino would not be cussing at him if he was dead). John thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep without reassurance that Santino was too tired and sore to startle him awake, thought he would wake up every morning as if to a gunshot and eventually beat an embarrassed retreat across the hall after one too many _what the fucking fuck are you doing,_ but he can sleep, and he wakes up calm, and Santino is just… _there_.

It’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

It just…takes some getting used to. Along with other aspects of life in the house now.

Everyone’s happy about it. It’s different than it was before, back when they were pleased that John and Santino finally stopped dancing around each other but only knew John in the same way you get to know a new neighbor, someone you get along with without getting to know simply because serendipity threw you just inside each other’s business. But the household went out of their way to be friendly during the last month and a half when they didn’t need to be, given that they’re all Santino’s people. So now they’re happy, but in a different way. Even Gianna, who suddenly spends a lot more time in John’s proximity by virtue of Santino and thus regards John as a child regards a freshly discovered zoo animal.

It’s nice, but it also makes the immediate aftermath of Palermo more uncomfortable.

John wasn’t lying when he told Caroline that the world thinking of him as a monster doesn’t matter. People have always been afraid of him and John has always known it. He knew Viggo was unsettled by him from the moment Viggo first laid eyes on a twenty-year-old kid who ended a street fight calm as the dead and covered in blood, not because he set out to tear the other guy apart but because the other guy was too strung out to stop fighting. He knew Viggo was truly afraid of him seven years ago from the moment he first laid eyes on his pet boogeyman returned from a three-year absence in the VIP room of a club now relegated to the founding myth of Baba Yaga, even with Fortuna there to supervise his impossible task and a kill collar around his neck with five times the lethal dose of tetrodotoxin to make sure he followed through. The Camorra being afraid of him is just another collection in a lifetime littered with people who cannot be convinced he’s human too.

The heart being attributed to him isn’t what snags in his head like a loose shirt thread caught in brambles either. He’s willingly done much worse to targets who were still alive and begging to die by the end and never lost a minute’s sleep over it (case in point: Nicky Moscone).

What snags is that the household is trying not to be afraid of him, but they can’t help it.

John tries not to scare them, but between seventeen years of training and his nature, he can’t help it. He can’t help it if he startles someone by accident because he’s spent the last seventeen years not making a sound when he moves. He can’t help it if he unsettles someone because he’s spent his entire life watching and listening for danger and is, as a result, extremely difficult to take by surprise. He can’t help it if he makes someone nervous because his demeanor doesn’t change between chatting amicably about nothing important and stabbing someone through the hand, even if the two occur within sixty seconds of each other.

He can’t help it. So instead, he pretends not to notice that he’s frightened them until they stop seeing the shadow that sprang out of the Norman Chapel and instead see John who they’ve gotten to be friendly with over the last month and a half. The better for the household not to feel bad about it, and the better to help everyone get back to normal.

Still, John is grateful for the one fringe benefit it affords him, which is that no one dares to even try to come into the master bedroom uninvited. Not during the day and certainly not when there’s any possibility John or Santino might be asleep.

Everyone except Gianna. Flora tells him over dinner the night Caroline and Gianna return that child Gianna used to overfill a mug of coffee and slip upstairs into Santino and Flora’s shared bedroom and wake Santino up with it, leaving a trail of coffee splatter in her wake. Santino follows it up by telling him that teenage Gianna used to fill a mug of coffee, slip into the master bedroom, and leap on the bed on top of Santino to make a nuisance of herself. College sleep deprivation seems to have cured that habit, along with daily training at ass o’clock in the ballroom. An unexpected side effect of sleeping in the same bed is that John now gets to see Santino wake up at ass o’clock to make sure she actually does it (which means John is long since awake and reading by the time Gianna has an opportunity to make a nuisance of herself).

Santino catches John looking wary that first night Gianna and Caroline come back. After Gianna observes them from the master bedroom doorway and quips, “You know, if you’re this disgustingly domestic when you’ve just woken up, you’re going to give me diabetes.”

“Luckily for your health, you’re not coming in here in the morning.”

John knows the moment Gianna lets out a delighted giggle that Santino said the wrong thing, because Gianna is his sister and therefore takes a closed door as a personal challenge. “You _are_ this disgustingly cute! This I have to see.”

“Like hell you do.”

“Like hell I don’t. This is prime blackmail material. Bianca will _coo_. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make Bianca coo?”

“The door is locked and Doria won’t hand over the key.”

Gianna pulls a face but finally straightens from the door frame. “Jeez. Gain a boyfriend and lose a sense of familial bonding.”

“Steal that key,” Santino says flatly, “and I will gouge your eyes out with it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Gianna finally takes her cue to leave and Santino locks the door behind her, but John’s leeriness must be more obvious than he thought, because Santino crosses back to John as soon as he lays eyes on him. “She’s just making a nuisance of herself. I’ve made it crystal clear she’s not coming in here and Doria will only open it over her dead body.”

John nods and turns back to his shirt cuff because he doesn’t want to talk about this. He’s not sure how he sleeps that night, but to his relief, he doesn’t wake up to Gianna the following morning. He wakes up to Santino’s gradual alarm and Santino shuffling out of bed.

“You alright?”

“Sorry,” Santino murmurs back, running an absent hand over the arm John reaches out to him. “I was hoping that wouldn’t wake you up.”

Given that the alarm makes the room as bright as daylight over the course of an hour and is far more effective at its job than the app John uses on his phone, that hope is giving John entirely too much credit for his ability to sleep through anything. “It’s fine. Where are you going?”

“To wake up Gianna for ballet. I’ll be back in an hour. Go back to sleep.”

John doesn’t go back to sleep. Instead, he listens to Santino move across the house, hears Gianna grumbling and shuffling around her room and Santino reminding her to get her pointe shoes as they go to the ballroom. He relaxes once the ballroom doors lock, but he doesn’t sleep then either. Instead, he gets his book and settles back to read in the early morning light. Gianna hovers over Santino’s shoulder when he unlocks the door, but her face falls when she sees John is already awake. “Figures you’re an obnoxious morning person. Who reads _Godel Escher Bach_ at this hour?”

They pass the week like that. Santino gets up, John listens to him herd Gianna to ballet, Santino reappears an hour later to shower, Gianna gives him shit about _Godel Escher Bach_. It’s a soothing rhythm, actually, one that bleeds into soothing days. Gianna still keeps a running stream of witty commentary at her brother about anything but especially about the Five Families, and now that John’s no longer avoiding Santino, he’s caught in the tide of it and spends a decent chunk of his day smoothing things between Santino and Gianna. It’s nice, being caught in the steady back-and-forth between the two of them. John’s surprised to find that he actually likes Gianna, for all her efforts to make a nuisance of herself at every opportunity. It doesn’t fix the catastrophe the Five Families are slowly but surely spiraling into, and the room still feels like it’s full of shattered glass after Barzini calls, but it’s not something that haunts the entire day, and it certainly doesn’t shake the soothing rhythm that begins each morning. 

So when Santino announces the night before his birthday that turning thirty-eight earns him the right to sleep in if nothing else, and therefore Gianna will drag her own ass to ballet the following morning, John’s calm about it. It’s been fine for an entire week. Doria is the only one with a key. Santino’s birthday is tomorrow, and he has a minor surprise with help from Flora. It’s good. Until it’s not. And when it’s not, John jolts awake to a voice shouting three feet behind his back.

Three things happen simultaneously.

One: John grabs a knife from the nightstand and flies across the room to pin the intruder to the wall, his hand covering their mouth to suppress a scream and the knife pressed to their jugular.

Two: Gianna registers John flying at her with a knife but is already pinned against the wall with a hand covering her mouth and a knife to her jugular before she has a chance to do anything about it, John staring at her with unseeing eyes unconscious of anything except murder.

Three: Santino flies across the bed after John at precisely the same moment John does, shooting sideways to avoid crashing his weight into John from behind so he can stop the hand holding the knife from slashing, his other arm reaching across John’s chest to as he lands half in between John and Gianna to hold John still.

“ _It’s just Gianna_ ,” he hisses. “It’s just Gianna, John.”

John presses forward.

Gianna’s eyes widen to half her face.

Santino’s grip tightens.

“John, look at me.” When John stays fixed on Gianna, Santino forces himself between them and snaps in Russian. “ _John_. Look at me.”

John blinks.

“It’s just Gianna. Look at me.”

John blinks again, looking to Santino.

“It’s alright,” Santino says softly. “We’re alright. It’s just Gianna.”

John lets out a shuddering breath.

“Easy. It’s alright.”

Santino fits himself right in front of John so he can’t see anything else and walks him backward into the bed, murmuring in Russian and pressing against John to hold him steady. Otherwise, the adrenaline would vibrate him clean out of his skin.

Gianna isn’t running. “Do you think that’s fucking funny?”

“Get out.”

It’s a tone that warns the knife isn’t safe to be around, but Gianna isn’t running. “I don’t know what you’re saying. What the fuck was that?”

That wins her Italian and an uglier tone. “I said get out.”

John flinches.

“Fuck you.” Gianna still isn’t running. “Even for you that’s taking a joke too far.”

“Get. Out.”

John tenses. He doesn’t have any words to tell himself to sit still. Santino’s grip tightens around him.

Except Gianna still isn’t fucking running. “I was just being funny. Where the fuck did that come from?”

“ _Get the fuck out of here!_ ” Santino’s roar starts in his toes and rattles the foundations, his face twisted in rage.

Gianna _finally fucking runs_. But Santino isn’t looking at her. He’s wrapping around John, anchoring him back in the room when he locks up for a fight at the scream. “I’m sorry. It’s alright. We’re alright.”

John lets out a breath between his teeth.

“Easy.” Santino takes the knife and tosses it away in favor of pulling John into him. “Breathe. We’re just fine.”

John breathes.

His brain catches up to what just happened.

Then he pulls away from Santino, hiding his face in his hands.

“John, it’s alright.”

“It’s not.” It comes out in Russian. Out of all his training, that was the one thing he didn’t want Santino to see. Not like that. Not out of context of someone trying to kill him. Not in a context that shows the reaction is involuntary.

Santino follows into Russian without blinking. “We’re fine. It’s perfectly alright.”

“I could have killed her.”

“It was an accident.”

“Nothing about this is accidental.”

“You weren’t even awake.”

“You didn’t really think I was born able to wake up to the sound of a gun safety and fire before I’m fully conscious, did you? That was the Red Room.” John keeps his face in his hands so he can say this without having to see Santino’s face. So he can just see the end result of it falling apart instead of watching in real-time. “The first year they handcuffed our hands and feet so we couldn’t escape and switched on bright lights and loud noises at random to shoot our internal clocks all to hell. And once we learned how to get out of the restraints, they would startle us awake at random. Sometimes you could go weeks without it, sometimes a dozen times a night for days on end, sometimes when you were punished, sometimes when you did well. Sometimes it was one person, sometimes as many people as they could get around you. Sometimes it was another trainee. And if you didn’t wake up to fight them off, they would kill you and leave your body in the training room for the rest of us to see the next morning. And if it was another trainee, they would kill both of you if one of you refused to kill the other. The third year they let us have weapons and moved them all around sporadically when we weren’t looking so we couldn’t rely on anything we hid. So we would learn to take in any environment and kill on instinct.”

John expects that to be that. For Santino to say they should go back to sleeping apart. Marcus never shared a bed with him again after he got back from the Red Room, even though Marcus knew all that without needing to be told. And John tells himself he’s fine with that. So John braces himself for a quiet _okay_ that precedes the end of the fantasy they’ve spun where this is a good idea.

Instead, Santino murmurs, “I know,” and presses around him again like a protective blanket. “I’m sorry.”

John drops his hands from his face and turns incredulous eyes at Santino, who meets his eye looking more apologetic than he’s ever seen. “What?”

“You didn’t really think it was a lucky accident that you somehow went months on end in a house with a staff of nearly forty people without anyone startling you awake, did you?” Santino sighs, pressing his hands into John’s chest to hold him still. “I heard rumors that you were Red Room a long time ago, so I made it clear to Doria not to let anyone wake you up except in an emergency from the other side of the door. As soon as I saw the tattoo, I made sure she was the only one with a key to your door and made it crystal clear that anyone who startled you awake would be skinned alive.” He sighs and glares at the door. “And then my idiot sister had to go and scream. I told Flora to keep it quiet, but she took a bit too much glee in scaring Gianna. By the time I realized I miscalculated and lunged for her she already screamed loud enough to wake the dead.”

Right. The other thing John doesn’t want to think about ever. “Case in point.”

“Point of what?”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“What?”

“This. Sleeping in the same room.” And yeah, that hurts to say, but killing Santino by accident is infinitely worse. “I’ll go back across the hall.”

Santino stares at him like he just suggested moving to Pluto. “John, we’re _fine_.”

“Did you miss the part where I almost killed your sister for startling me awake?”

“Did you miss the part where I flew across the bed with you?”

“What if next time it’s you?” That hurts even worse to say, but waking up to it would be worse.

“There won’t be a next time and you won’t kill me by accident.”

John’s sigh warps into a growl. “I know you’re humanly incapable of feeling fear but for once in your goddamn life will you listen to me?”

“I don’t need to be afraid of you,” Santino snaps. “Why do you think no one in this house wakes me up ahead of an alarm except in an emergency in easy retreat range? And Doria’s the only one with a key to this room?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Massima trained us since we were four. I was trained to do the same thing you were. I thought Flora told you that.”

John’s avoided thinking about that day from the moment it happened, so that sentence didn’t process until now. And in retrospect, that’s a much more horrifying statement on Massima Rosalia’s parenting than John thought it was. “I didn’t think she did _that_.”

“Well, not quite that. We had since we were four for it to become second nature, so she didn’t need to be as brutal. We didn’t have consequences on the scale you did either. She would just put us through the ringer if we lost or gave up or refused to fight. And since it was family or security, Flora and I had to learn how to differentiate threat versus non-threat so we didn’t kill someone by accident. And Flora and I shared a room the whole time. Same bed half the time. And if you think we somehow passed a decade and a half without startling each other, you’re wrong. Especially in the beginning when we were more at risk of killing each other by accident. Never mind spending my entire life surrounded by people who could kill me if I startled them awake. So no, John, for once in my goddamn life I do not need to be afraid of you, because for once in my goddamn life this is one area where I’m uniquely equipped to _handle it_.”

The last two words come out as a whip crack that startles both of them. For a moment they just stare at each other, silence stretching between them as if unsure which direction to go.

Then John sighs, resting his forehead against Santino’s shoulder. “This is so not how I wanted to start your birthday.”

Santino snorts. “Figures sleeping in was too much to ask for.”

“We’re already plotting. That just tipped the scales too far.”

“I’m a man of simple tastes.”

John sits up, gives him a flat look, and nods to the Klimt on the wall.

Santino bursts out laughing.

John tries and fails not to laugh.

And John finally processes they’re fine. They’re perfectly fine.

So when they finally stop laughing, John pulls them both to stand. “Coffee?”

“Yes.” Santino gives the door a sour glare. “The better to deal with that bullshit and wipe the feeds.”

“And move on.”

“Agreed. Oh, and by the way,” Santino says in a pleasant tone as his hand pauses at the doorknob, finally back in melodic, safe Italian, “will it upset you if I were to start shouting?”

John considers it for a second. “Not if I had warning, no.”

Santino nods. “I’m going to open the door, and then I’m going to start shouting.”

“Thanks.”

He still opens the door and looks to John in question, and when John nods, he gives a small nod, takes the key ring out of the doorknob, turns down the hall, and roars, “ _Doria!_ ”

John can’t hear what Doria calls back, but Santino is already striding down the hall radiating war.

Doria waits for them in the kitchen doorway. “Everything alright?”

“Do I look like everything’s alright?” Santino snarls. “Explain to me what the fuck just happened.”

“What just happened?”

“Do _not_ be clever, Doria.”

“I’m not.” She at least has the sense to back up when Santino blows up to her. “Is something wrong?”

He points to Gianna at the breakfast table. “She got into the master bedroom and startled us awake. You’re the only one with a key. So explain to me what the fuck just happened.”

“Your boyfriend has no sense of humor is what just happened,” Gianna mutters. “I’ve done that to you a thousand times. What’s the big fucking deal?”

Santino fixes a look on her that could freeze the Pacific Ocean solid. “Shut up. Now.” He turns back to Doria with the same look on his face.

“I didn’t give her my key,” Doria says, still looking between them in plain confusion and rising concern.

Santino holds up the key ring.

“I didn’t give her my key,” Doria repeats, staring at the key ring with a deepening frown. “I set it on the counter and stepped outside—”

She stops. Then her face morphs into fury. And when it does, she strides across the kitchen, grabbing the paper off the counter as she goes to hit Gianna upside the head with it. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

“What the _fuck_ , Doria?” Gianna squawks in outrage, though she has enough good sense to shrink from Doria raising the paper again in threat.

“I know which room in this house you were born in, so I know for a fact you weren’t born in a barn.” Doria points the newspaper at Santino and John. “Look what you did! Scaring Santino and John like that. And on your brother’s birthday, too.”

“Scaring them?” Gianna repeats incredulously, pointing at John. “He was the one who almost—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Santino snaps.

“What the fucking fuck was that?”

“The reason we startle you awake,” Santino replies, flinging the keys on the counter to stride toward the coffee machine like he means to interrogate it for murder. “And the reason why we’re not doing it anymore. Don’t do that again.”

“ _That’s why_?” And _there’s_ the abject horror John was waiting for. “You’re _certifiable_.”

Santino turns away from the coffee machine, rests his hands on the table, and leans into Gianna’s face to stare dead into her eyes. “I will not repeat myself. This is your only warning. Don’t do that again.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Gianna grumbles, turning back to her coffee looking more horrified than chastised. “I hear you, Jesus Christ—”

She picks up the mug, only for it to tumble out of her hands and spill all over the table when Santino reaches one hand out to take hold of her chin and pull her so hard to face him that her entire body moves with her. Her hands freeze in the air, the coffee forgotten even as the mug rolls dangerously toward the edge of the table, because Santino is approximately half an inch away from her face. “Do this again,” he says in the low, quiet tone that immediately precedes reminding someone exactly what kind of sadistic psychopath he is, “and what happened to our father will look like a charming going away party. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes.”

Santino lets her go and turns to John. “Anything you’d like to add?”

“Nah, I think you got it covered.”

Doria clucks, setting down the paper on her way back to John. “Come have coffee. You’ll feel a lot better.”

“What will he feel a lot better about?” Flora calls from the hallway, stepping in the door with Elle beside her only to raise her eyebrows at Santino stepping away from Gianna and Gianna mopping up an entire mug of spilled coffee. “What the hell happened here?”

Doria side-eyes Gianna as she tugs at John’s elbow. “Gianna startled them awake.”

Flora turns to Gianna, her face alive in rage. “ _You_ —”

“Okay.” John catches her by the shoulders and hauls her back before she can lunge across the room at Gianna.

“ _But she_ —”

“He’s got it covered,” John replies, still blocking Flora in case she changes her mind. “Besides, you said you wanted to see me about something before you started birthday planning?”

“I did?” Flora’s brow wrinkles, then her face lights up. “ _Oh._ I did!” She grabs the front of John’s shirt and pulls. “Be right back!”

“You’d better be,” Santino calls after them, leaving Gianna at the table to trot down the basement stairs to the camera room.

Flora makes it three steps, then backtracks into the kitchen and flips Gianna off with both hands and an incoherent snarl before John catches her by the shoulders again and steers her past a snickering Mikkel and Astrid.

“Morning, John,” Elle calls over her shoulder, still laughing.

“Morning, Elle.”

“Disembowel Gianna for me!” Flora shouts over her shoulder.

“Santino’s got it covered,” Elle says brightly. “Besides, murder puts me off breakfast.”

“That’s the spirit,” John tells her, hauling Flora into the entry hall before she has time to change her mind.

Flora doesn’t change her mind, but she’s not distracted either. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Seriously, John. Do I need to kill her?”

“I’m fine, Flora. We’re perfectly fine.” He is, and they are, because apparently miracles do exist.

Flora holds out her arms. “Can I hug you?”

“Since when do you ask?”

“Since I’m trying not to re-traumatize you.” At John’s nod, she darts in and hugs him with all her might.

John lets himself breathe for a minute before extricating himself. “Before he gets curious.”

“Right.” Flora digs her phone out of her pocket. “I told you I can get anything.”

She checks over his shoulder and shows him a photo on her phone. Flora can, indeed, get anything. “You’re amazing.”

“And don’t you forget it, motherfucker.” She smiles ear-to-ear. “Everything’s set up in his room at my place. Whisk him away sometime between eleven and midnight, depending on the swing of things. I’ll keep the cousins raising hell for a while longer once you leave.”

“Everything’s there?”

Flora’s smile turns shit-eating. “You’re so cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“Flora.”

“Yes, everything.” She hugs him again. At this rate John might start getting used to it. “He’ll love it. And you.”

Less so the last bit. Fortunately, she lets go when Ares pokes him in the shoulder. _We eating breakfast and sticking to the schedule or what?_

Sameen is even less subtle, dragging him by the shirtsleeve.

Santino notices the moment he comes back upstairs from the camera room, of course. “You look like you’ve been plotting.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” John takes the coffee offered to him and sits next to Santino. “We were thinking, though.”

“About?”

“Taking advantage of the weather and driving up to the Santa Severa beach.”

“Conveniently getting me out of the house, of course.”

“Of course.”

Santino smirks and holds out a hand to Ares. “Good. Then I don’t have to try and convince you.”

Ares fishes an envelope out of her pocket looking entirely too smug for her health.

“Pretty sure your birthday means I’m supposed to give you something.”

“I know.” Santino grins as he pulls open the envelope and drops a set of keys into John’s hand. “But this is more fun.”

The keys belong to a black 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1. John falls in love with it as soon as he lays eyes on it. Then bends Santino back over the hood to kiss him senseless when Santino comments he never thought he'd be jealous of a car, ignoring the hooting and hollering in the background.

They do end up driving out of Torvaianica to Santa Severa with Ares and Sameen trailing on their bikes. They only pass the first half of the day that way, though, Ares signing snarky commentary while Sameen eggs Santino and John into traumatizing little old ladies who stare. Once the sun and the heat peak in mid-afternoon, though, they shift somewhere without an audience—an empty airfield outside the city where John can drift and rip laughter out of Santino as he puts the car through its paces. Every laugh has him pushing the car a little harder, whirling and pouring on speed just for the sound of it until Santino’s finally breathless when the car rolls to stop.

They let Ares and Sameen show off and race each other the length of the airfield, but Santino looks up to find John isn’t paying them any mind. "What are you doing?"

"Looking at you."

Santino laughs and kisses him. "Creep."

As they creep toward five, though, Ares makes pointed hints about getting back to the house. John demurs, saying Caroline needs to meet them at the apartment.

Santino’s face says bullshit, but lo and behold, Caroline’s waiting for them in the apartment already dressed for the party. “John said you needed something?”

“Yes.” There are garment bags in her hands, which she distributes and herds them toward the stairs. “To make sure you don’t distract your boyfriend and show up late to your own party like an asshole.”

Santino’s smirk says he absolutely planned to be that asshole, but he takes the hint. He still succeeds in distracting John, because he is _very distracting_ in a blue suit, and his smug smile says he knows it. “How do I look?”

“Like the king of hell you are,” Caroline says drily from the doorway. “Let’s go.”

There’s a tall iron gate temporarily erected to block off Viale della Trinita dei Monti. Not as far back as Flora would have liked, but she didn’t want to attract undue tourist attention either, given the proximity to the Spanish Steps. Still, booking out the entirety of Villa Medici buys hearty negotiating power, particularly when the customers are Flora and Elle Rosalia. So Flora has the street temporarily cleared of cars all the way down to Terrazza del Pincio, an army circling the entirety of the Villa’s external wall, and guests politely if inelegantly funneled through the back entrance via the parking garage on Viale del Muro Torto. The only ones there to greet them are the wall of muscle opening the gate and the row of black SUVs surrounded by still more muscle at the front door.

“You know,” Santino says idly as they step out of the car, “I had the strangest idea this would be a low-key affair.”

Then it’s Caroline’s turn to smirk. “What do you take us for, plebes? Besides, you were born on the same day as Flora. You were never going to have a low-key birthday.”

Nothing should surprise John about Flora and Santino anymore, and yet. “I thought Flora was kidding about sharing a party with him.”

“She was two weeks late and I was a month early. Within two minutes of each other, according to the paperwork.” Santino says it as though recalling a fond childhood memory and not that time they both put their mothers through hell.

And yet, Santino and Flora. “You really are twins.”

Santino just laughs, pausing to brush off John’s jacket. “Shall we?”

John’s usually on pseudo-bodyguard duty for parties, both a bright jewel to show off in Santino’s crown and a warning of who the king really is. He’ll trail after Santino’s entrance and remain a shadow at Santino’s periphery, because Santino is king of the Camorra and this party is about showing it, which means John needs to be one of his crown jewels instead of just _his_. And John is not a bodyguard by nature, which means parties are usually rather dull. But right now, John’s still caught in the magnetism of standing next to Santino, of waiting at the other side of the party for the dark and private hours Santino won’t share with anyone else, of knowing Santino will prize him the most of all his treasures when there’s no one there who needs to see him do it. And in that light, the party sounds like great fun. “Let’s.”

So Santino smiles and kisses him before taking the arm Caroline offers him, letting John fall into step with Ares and Sameen around them as Caroline leads them through Villa Medici and out to the garden.

The eye is drawn to the heart of the courtyard first, where an enormous pomegranate tree holds center stage with strings of red lights emanating out from it to trail all across the garden. Or at least, it looks like a pomegranate tree until you get close enough to discover it’s a brass sculpture hung with paper-thin leaves and glittering red glass pomegranates. There are potted pomegranate trees dotting the garden path, but they all look pale and false with their fantastical cousin lording over them. Especially because there are cocktail tables draped in inky blue and oxblood and crowned with more tiny metal pomegranate trees wearing their red fruits and string lights like fine earrings. And with the posts stationed throughout the garden to keep the light strings up, Elle and Flora created alcoves and nooks and hideaways, swathed in oxblood or midnight blue fabric with gold wire cocktail tables and benches tucked inside, some wide enough to fit ten, some scarcely big enough to fit two in an intimate crush.

The star of the show is the art Flora commissioned for the occasion from Michelangelo Pistoletto, who will begin his twelve months as a Resident Fellow of the French Academy next month. Apparently, it’s a spin on his iconic Mirror Paintings, inspired by the party Elle and Flora planned: thirty mirrors scattered throughout the garden, some tucked into Elle’s alcoves of fabric and metal, some standing tall to face the path like doors whose surrounding walls have long since disintegrated to history. Half of them are broken, holding together just enough to refract the images of happy partygoers into something sharp and brutal in the red light. The whole mirrors are not mirrors at all but photo-silkscreened images transposed on steel sheets, shadows in a hazy garden of red and gold under an inky sky who seem like they could step out of their reality and into this one if someone simply invited them in.

For now, though, the ghosts simply look on, because every person in the crowd of red and black and gold is looking at Santino. No one approaches, though, Not yet. Instead, Gianna hooks Flora’s arm, hails a waiter to follow, and tows both of them up to Santino and Caroline. “Having fun yet?”

Santino laughs and holds out his other arm for Flora to sidle up to him where she belongs. “You two really are marvelous.”

Gianna’s dress is the color of the champagne she distributes among the three of them, but the red lights of the tree refract off of her as she turns back to the crowd with a glass held high, a trophy the three shadows behind her crafted out of a thousand glittering droplets of lifeblood. “To Santino, and to Flora, of course.” She says the last bit as an aside, Flora giggling behind her, but they all know who this toast is for. “To reaping the fruits of your labor. To astounding while the whole world watches. And to the future.” Gianna turns back to her brother to hold out her flute to his. “May it be _everything_ you deserve.”

Santino clinks their glasses together, meeting her eye as he drinks. Then he turns to the party with a blinding smile to astound while the whole world watches. “You heard the woman. Let’s have a party.”

It’s a bit like the D’Antonio wedding in Paris. Except this time, instead of stealing the show from the happy couple, Santino _is_ the show. Which means that every single person in the Villa Medici garden is here for one mission and one mission only: to impress him.

Like his high-ranking underlings and local bosses, for instance, who are all quite eager to show Santino how gracefully they’ve been managing business as of late and how well they might impress him with the Sicilians if only they were offered the chance to do so.

Like the hedge fund’s C-suite executives (beyond Caroline, of course), major shareholders, and general partners, who are all quite eager to show Santino their work on whale clients and major portfolios and chat with him about their ideas for future growth avenues.

Like the small, exclusive international club ranging from fast-living gossip column fodder to the titled and fastidiously conservative old money all united by the belief that Santino is the invisible hand that makes their pretty lives sparkle.

Like the major Cosa Nostra leadership whose money is as tied up in the hedge fund’s coffers as a barn swallowed whole by kudzu and are thus scrambling to ensure their bankroll won’t tear their foundations out from under them when the Camorra finally ends its laissez faire approach to the current strain of American idiocy.

Like the ‘Ndrangheta representatives of various stripes here to offer their services in wiping out the current strain of American idiocy, because Domenico has never been accused of missing an opportunity to poke Vincenzo in the eye (he did not send Carmine, though, because his sense of humor does not exceed his common sense).

Like Fredo Corleone, who can’t honestly be expected to impress anyone, least of all Santino, but was sent as a representative on his family’s behalf because Santino wouldn’t allow Vito or Michael to be spared for the occasion.

But for the truly superb dinner theatre, the family holds the home field advantage. Take Santino's aunts, Elena Rosalia and Marella D'Antonio, a powerful Rosalia head in Sao Paulo and the socialite wife of Giovanni's other surviving brother, Salvatore. They serve as the closest representatives of their respective families to Santino, and more importantly for everyone’s entertainment, they loathe each other. Marella rightly believes Elena is a cold-blooded and bloodthirsty carrion crow who doesn't trust her to protect Santino and Flora. Elena rightly believes Marella is a status-obsessed ivory tower anglo-beceri.

As to evidence of the former, well. It’s not every woman who could get to a panicked phone call from Doria saying her sister was just murdered in front of Santino and Flora and respond by collecting herself, her two children, and an army to show up on Giovanni D’Antonio’s doorstep not twenty minutes later and inform Giovanni D’Antonio that she, her children, and her army were moving into his home that very minute to protect her niece and nephew or she would collect her niece and nephew and burn every last D’Antonio in their beds. And yet, Elena Rosalia, now all of seventy-five and still the terror of Flora's Sao Paulo operation. It does John’s soul good to know Giovanni had to live the last eleven years of his life with Elena as his own personal monster under the bed. She arrived last night to help her daughter and Flora terrorize the party planning staff, an easy enough feat considering Elena usually terrorizes drug dealers with nail guns.

As to evidence of the latter, one need only look to Marella's children, who are, in order: Lucian, who is a financier heading Santino's London operations, Carlo, who was a Parliament politician before his death five years ago, Gianna, who is a financier and front-facing middle manager for the fund's Rome operations, and Daphne, who is a socialite due to marry another Parliament politician next summer. It's unclear why Salvatore and Marella skipped over two sons to invest their High Table aspirations in their third child, but given that Lucian has the talent for numbers and no ambition for the High Table seat, Carlo had all the ambition and none of the mathematical brilliance, and Gianna has the best of both, it's perhaps a sign that Marella's high society skills have a psychic bent. Also a sign of what kind of asshole Giovanni was, given that his brother already named a daughter after Gianni a full seven years before Giovanni chose to bestow the name on his own daughter. Fortunately or unfortunately for the elder Gianna, she couldn't pronounce her own name as a child, and as a consequence no one but her driver's license calls her anything but Gigi (her parents still haven’t forgiven her for it).

Elena and Marella can agree on exactly four things, in order of importance: 1) their love for Santino and Flora, 2) their hatred for Giovanni, 3) their nearly equal hatred for Gianna's mother, Manon, and 4) their outrage, which persists to this day, that Giovanni and Manon had the nerve to force them to agree on anything.

As for the children, well. That’s equally entertaining politics. Despite the fact that Salvatore and Marella’s kids grew up having weekly dinners with Santino and Flora while Elle and her brother grew up seeing Santino and Flora every day (and living in the same house from the age of fourteen on), Marella doesn’t view them as a threat on account of being mere Rosalias, a fact Elle meets with artfully executed pettiness every time one of Marella’s friends employs Elle’s services as a party planner. Gigi is fond of Gianna as a second sister she never had, perhaps helped by the fact that she doesn’t view Gianna as a threat. Neither feeling is mutual. They all get along in front of Santino, of course. Pointedly. Everyone except Daphne, God love her, who flits between everyone like a canary trapped in a mine as the universal peacemaker, and Silvio, who has not spoken a single word to Salvatore in twenty years and sees no reason why being warm with Marella (or standing three feet apart from Salvatore, for that matter) should have any effect on that policy. 

Then there’s Bianca, who takes personal joy in offending Marella’s sensibilities on Santino’s behalf since he’s not at liberty to do it himself. And while Benedetta isn’t here mediate the war of small cruelties between her sister and her old friend (helping the family clean up a massacre in Romania, apparently), it’s immediately obvious that Bianca and Gigi have spent their lives taking up arms for their respective generals, because they’re opposites in every way except one (the mathematical brilliance they offer to the family business), and as a consequence take that one shared trait as a personal insult. It’s like God’s casting director put out calls for perfect foils and wound up with towering, ethereal blonde Gigi in a burgundy lace cocktail dress on the one hand, and on the other, tiny Bianca in a tailored black tomboy-forced-to-dress-up suit and maniac dominate-the-world-with-darkness-and-void curls.

It’s _hilarious_ , even when they’re not doing anything but standing next to each other. Because on one hand, Gigi literally looks down her nose at Bianca (she’s more than a foot taller than Bianca even before adding four-inch Louboutins into the equation), but on the other hand, what Bianca lacks in height she makes up for in snark (and a certain swagger that says she could tear Gigi limb from limb with nothing but a cocktail skewer and have grand fun doing it).

But most striking of all the family is Gianna. Gianna and Santino together.

How, for once, they fit together. 

How they sometimes share a look and a private smile like they’re not in a crowded party.

How they stand side-by-side as if united against the world that’s against them.

How they seem like they could be happy.

How their reflections in the mirror behind them rend into a hundred shattered pieces when they burst out laughing together, Gianna entirely lost in the implosion of shards where the hammer struck, Santino a composite image of a thousand precarious hairline fractures a breath away from crumbling in the blast radius.

It’s also the mirrors that lead John to notice something he should have noticed earlier: the people at the party have noticed him. They’re watching him.

Which pricks his ears at first, because no one notices the security at these things. Then John realizes they’re not watching him—they’re pointing and glancing when they think he’s not looking and scrambling to look away when they realize he’s seen them. Whispering. Hurrying out of the way when they see him coming. And once he sees it, he sees people’s eyes flick to him and quickly away when they see him behind Santino’s shoulder with Ares and Sameen, always watching him out of the corners of their eyes.

Seems word of Palermo has spread.

Marella doesn’t want to be anywhere near him. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t Friday night dinner at the house when John finds a reason to be elsewhere. This is a party, and he’s in Santino’s periphery. So she does her level best not to look at him.

“Is it appropriate?” she says finally, when she has Santino at a minor remove, her party smile still affixed.

“I never am.” Santino adopts a posture of not listening, his attention focused on the drink a waiter hands him. But his voice is still low enough not to carry to the party. “So you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Having Mr. Wick here.” Salvatore rarely calls him anything other than Baba Yaga. Marella refuses to call him anything other than Mr. Wick. “This is about the Camorra’s success. With him here, everyone’s thinking about Palermo.”

“And how exactly do you think the Camorra built its success?” Elena’s ivory tower anglo-beceri accusation is correct in one regard: despite being married to Salvatore for thirty-four years, Marella is still frightened of violence. Then again, Salvatore managed the family interests in Parliament the entire time Marella has known him, and she wouldn’t have lasted thirty-four years with a husband any closer to the physical side of the business.

“That’s not what I mean. It frightens them.”

“They need to be frightened.” Santino always takes a particular pitch with Marella about these things. The steel core is still there, but in gentler wrappings than he would use on anyone else. “They need to be reminded. The Sicilians will come under our wing again. But we can’t have any more incidents. John is part of that.”

Marella’s smile thins, but she takes the arm he offers her. “I want you to meet someone.”

Marella always wants Santino to meet someone. Women, to be precise. Ares nudges John and rolls her eyes when Marella can’t see.

Fortunately, Santino doesn’t need to converse with whoever the hell Marella’s picked for him this time. Daphne, God love her, intercepts her mother and cousin en route with her new fiance, Pier. Santino smiles as though he hasn’t seen her in years. “Daphne, dear, I was wondering when I’d see you.”

“We’ve been trying to get to you for an hour, but,” Daphne gestures to the party.

Santino chuckles. “Like the bride at the wedding, I know. Congratulations, by the way.”

Daphne beams and shows off her engagement ring. Pier doesn’t seem to know what to do in Santino’s presence for fear of fucking up in front of the center of Gigi and Daphne’s universe and lights up when Santino commends him for his good taste in pale green sapphires and fiancees.

“Second scariest moment of my life was picking out an engagement ring for a jewelry designer.”

“You’re a braver man than me.”

Brave is not a word John would apply to Pier Giamacotta, who Daphne fell in love with primarily because he would never hurt her, but it wins Santino a round of polite laughter. Then Pier glances at Daphne and visibly steels himself to not fuck something up. “Actually, we were hoping to have a word?”

“Dearest,” Marella’s party smile flips to a higher wattage, a reminder of their surroundings. “It’s Santino’s birthday.” Meaning Marella probably already told them not to bring it up here and Pier got ahead of himself.

“It’s quite alright, Marella.” Marella’s party smile is bright, but Santino’s is brighter. “What did you want to ask?”

“Well, it’s just,” except Pier doesn’t know what to do now that he has Santino’s full attention and turns to Daphne.

“We’ve always spent so much time at your house,” Daphne jumps in, a generous underestimation given that they spend at least a Friday night dinner every Friday Santino happens to be home and have done so their entire lives. “It always felt so special to me. Like a getaway to somewhere magical.”

A warmer interpretation of the house than John’s ever heard, but at least someone in the world thinks so.

“Daphne always speaks so highly of it.” Pier’s been to dinner there a few times. He at least knows what he’s getting into, even if he’s entirely out of his depth.

“And it’s still really early,” Daphne says quickly. They have, after all, barely been engaged a week. “But we were talking. About what the dream wedding would look like, you know?”

“You’ve always been important to Daphne. And the house has so many good memories.” Pier treats Daphne like she’s the most wonderful thing the universe ever gave him. And because Daphne talks about Santino like he’s responsible for the current arrangement of her sun, moon, and stars, Pier looks like he’s about to spontaneously combust for fear of fucking this up. “And we threw out ideas, but, well. Out of every place that’s really special, we kept circling back to the house.”

“So we were wondering—hoping,” Daphne falters. Santino gives her an encouraging smile. She takes a breath and forges on, an impressive show of bravery from Daphne. “We were hoping…you might be open to…letting us have the wedding there next summer?” She can’t seem to believe she got the sentence out and scrambles to talk herself out of hoping as soon as she hears herself ask. “Obviously, it’s a ways away, and take as much time as you need to consider, and of course there are events to plan around—”

“Daphne.” She freezes. Santino smiles like the sun. “I would be honored and delighted.”

Daphne looks like she’s trying to be dignified, but also, the universe just gave her a gift she told herself never to hope for. So she’s trying to be dignified, but also she really wants to hug Santino, except Santino doesn’t let anyone hug him other than Flora and Bianca, so instead she hugs Pier and lets out an undignified squeal.

 _Another one_? Sameen signs behind their backs. 

Ares’s work face stays in place, but the point stands. Another damn wedding. With Marella. Good thing Doria stockpiles top shelf booze.

“Have you asked him?” Elle says brightly, she and Flora strolling away from raising hell with the Arafa cousins looking entirely too proud of themselves.

Daphne beams.

“See?” Flora preens. “I told you he’d be delighted to do it, sweetie.”

Elle trots up to mob Daphne. “And we’ll deliver the wedding to end all dream weddings.”

Good to know that all’s fair in love and war.

Daphne’s giddiness attracts enough attention from the rest of the party that Santino takes his excuse to let go of Marella. “Pardon me a moment?”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Flora’s still in the middle of the mess mobbing Daphne, which does not stop her from making a nuisance of herself to her brother.

“Freshening up.”

Flora’s eye roll likely reads to the crowd as _you’re not subtle when escaping Marella’s matchmaking_. John knows it actually means _I know exactly what kind of freshening up you’re doing_. “Don’t take long. Mischa will have the cake out soon and she will have me hunt you down.”

The open space just inside Villa Medici is surprisingly quiet, the noise muffled by a set of curtains Elle temporarily erected behind the marble lions for a bit of privacy from the party. Santino sighs through hours and layers of masking and digs his phone out of his pocket to glare at it. “Christ, didn’t anyone tell these people there’s a party?”

“We can take it for a bit, boss,” Giacomo chimes in from his post nearby.

Santino shakes his head and tosses it to him. “Take it out to the car.”

“You sure you want it that far?”

“Renato’s still with the car. Tell him to speak up if someone’s calling me with news of murder.” Santino glances over his shoulder to smile at John as he walks toward the stairs, headed the opposite direction from the men’s room. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

Something turns out to be one of the Villa’s private artist studios for resident fellows on the third floor, removed enough from the party to be hushed and still and not at risk of anyone wandering in accidentally. Removed from the boys, even, who at this floor are only loosely circulating through less-trafficked corridors just in case. Santino doesn’t turn the light on, letting the sun turn the white sheets draped over canvases into streams of burning orange and gold while the chandelier above them refracts glittering crystals of red from the string lights outside the windows. “Did you actually want to show me something, or is this just a spry upgrade on a supply closet?” John says wryly, leaving Ares and Sameen to perch near the door while he follows Santino inside.

Santino laughs as he checks canvases under their sheets. “Give me a bit of credit.” He pulls a sheet off one canvas leaning against the wall, only to shake his head and step away from it, leaving the sheet a puddle on the floor while he looks through others in search of something else. It takes him a minute to find what he wants—an unfinished painting still on a canvas—and then turn and smile at John. “These ones I already knew about. Come here. Look at this with me.”

John ignores Ares wagging her eyebrows and steps up alongside Santino, not much closer than he’s been throughout the party and yet closer than he’s been in hours, standing beside Santino instead of behind him, Santino facing him with a smile that isn’t his party smile.

“Tell me what you see.”

He says it softly, as though gesturing for John to follow him inside a quiet room. So John forces himself to stop looking at Santino and look at the painting instead. “Looks like another mirror painting. Different than the ones outside. Unfinished. Oil paint.”

Santino’s laugh feels like the last rays of the sunset, warm and golden and soft. “What else?”

“Two men. In an empty room, with a window behind them. Mirrors on either side of them, I think. On the walls.”

“Why is that?”

“Light from the window is bouncing off the glass onto them. Probably just from our angle. From theirs they can probably see the whole reflection.”

Santino hums. “What about the men?”

“Hard to see their faces from the light behind them. Looks like they’re smiling.”

“How can you tell?”

“Relaxed posture, looking at each other. You can make out some of an expression from the texture and the light. Probably wouldn’t be smiling like that if the other one wasn’t smiling back, at least a little.”

“What are they doing?”

“Reaching for each other, maybe. Or one of them caught the other’s fingers and they haven’t closed their hands yet. Look at their feet. They’re moving, or they’re about to. Maybe one’s leading the other, how he’s turned a bit away. Or maybe he’s just started to turn back to the other one once the other one caught up to him. But the other one’s moving too, how he’s carrying his weight in his feet. Like he’s just caught himself and he’s about to move but hasn’t yet. Waiting for a cue, maybe. Or getting ready to give one—they both look like they’re turning toward each other, so it’s hard to tell who’s leading. Or if they’re both moving at the same time, looking to figure out how to move together as they catch up to each other. Dancing, maybe, or just starting to.”

Santino hums again, and John looks up to find Santino not looking at the painting at all. He’s studying John like he’s the best view in the room. Like he’s been waiting for hours so he could stay like this for hours.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking at you.”

“Creep.”

Santino just laughs over the snickering from the peanut gallery, the brightest sound John’s heard all day, and kisses John tasting like good bourbon and late summer heat.

Parties are way less boring with this to look forward to. “So it is a spry upgrade on a supply closet.”

“Maybe.” Santino pulls him in again to kiss him deeper this time, humming in contentment over the cooing from the peanut gallery. “You have no idea how many hours I’ve spent wanting to do that.”

“Poor you.” John smooths a hand over Santino’s lapel. “An entire party full of people focused on you, and here you are.”

“Here I am.” Santino rests his forehead against John’s. “Wanting the one person who can’t pay attention.”

“You already have my attention.” John kisses him again to prove the point, only to laugh to himself. “What is it with you and weddings, anyway?”

Santino rolls his eyes. “It’s a status thing with them. I expect I’ll have to host Gigi’s wedding too when Marella finally finds a prince worthy of her.” His mouth twists into a smile. “And come up with ways for us to enjoy ourselves.”

“We do have a track record to maintain,” John murmurs, glancing down at Santino’s collar. “While the wedding isn’t watching.”

“What if they were watching?”

“Very funny.”

Santino studies him for a moment like he’s turning something over on his tongue. “No, really. What if they were watching?”

A laugh slips out before John can help it. Before he can register that the tone isn’t carelessly loud and flippant. “Even for you, that’s high wire. Especially with Marella involved.”

“Not like that.” Santino’s hand shifts from John’s jaw to under his chin, nudging John to meet his eye. His face is surprisingly open when John gets there. “I would dance with you at that wedding for every last one of them to see.” His hand settles on John’s jaw again, his eyes bright but quiet in a way that says this isn’t a joke at all. “Hell, I’d go back downstairs right now.”

John forces out another laugh. This one catches in his teeth. “That’s one way to get Marella to stop introducing you to women.”

“I’ve told Marella to fuck off in so many words for eighteen years. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You and I both know it’s not that easy.”

“No,” Santino allows. “But it doesn’t have to be that complicated either.”

He’s wearing an expression like he wore that night at the Paris Continental that said this was a good idea. A face that says it doesn’t have to be that complicated at all. Even though John knows it is, for all Santino purports to bend the world to his will. “Where is this coming from?”

“I’m thirty-eight, and by the start of September you will be too, and I,” Santino glances down at his glass and swirls the alcohol in it as if to shake something into clarity, “I never intended to spend the rest of my life like this.” He exhales like he can unspool the next thirty-eight years in front of him. “I told myself I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life like this.” His gaze flicks back up to John, like he can read the future in the margins of John’s face. “I wouldn’t ask you to either.”

 _You’re not as invested as he is. And you’re going to hurt him_. John tells memory-Caroline to fuck right off. “I’m a pragmatist, not a romantic. I don’t mind staying out of sight if it keeps the Camorra in line.”

“For now. While it’s still early.” Santino says it like he’s already played out this scene before, a wry pull to his face that says he knows how the scene ends down that avenue.

“That’s what I mean.” John’s not sure if he knows what he means, beyond the fact that it isn’t this easy just because Santino says it is. “It’s still early. We were a mess this summer. I’m not going to set everything on fire for you for nothing.”

“First of all, it’s not the early years anymore. I have ties running twelve years deep. I own them now. And second, I’d like to think it’s not for nothing.”

“It isn’t, but this isn’t a teenager springing out of the closet with rainbow confetti either.”

“This was never going to stay a secret forever. Not with the way I live. I planned for that eventuality a long time ago.” Santino says it like he’s exhausted by how long it’s already lasted. “Eventually there would be a night like Florence that happened in front of people who know me or I would hook a worm who decided to squirm rather than tolerate it. Though I suppose I underestimated Caroline’s capacity to defy gravity to protect me.”

John doesn’t let himself apologize for Florence, because it’s not the point and he’s not sorry. “Florence was thinking fast in a crisis knowing we could control the fallout. It won’t happen here.”

“Personally,” Santino traces a hand along John’s tie, “I’m quite happy with how we dealt with things in Florence.”

“Then let us deal with it a bit longer.” He’s a pragmatist, not a romantic, but there are times when pragmatism sounds like cruelty.

“The point isn’t that I could deal with it.” Santino lets out a laugh that’s twelve years sour. “I’m too good at dealing with it. The point is that I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either. But I’m not careless with things that matter.” It comes out like John’s measuring every word, because this is not nothing. “I’m not going to be careless with this.”

“I’m not saying let’s be careless. And believe it or not,” Santino glances at the painting and lets a disbelieving laugh escape, “I did actually bring you up here to show you a painting and not to corner you. I’m just saying life is too short.”

“It is. I’m not saying I’m not interested. I’m saying for now,” John presses close, hoping that translates the point, “let’s not be careless, and let’s enjoy it.”

Sameen clears her throat loudly, not the laughing kind but the kind that says they need to look prepared to handle business instead of up in each other’s business, and so they step carefully back into the pose they were in earlier to admire the painting, though not before sharing a look that says they’re not done not being careless and enjoying it. Then there are footsteps coming through the door, and a man’s voice. “Ah. There you are.”

It’s a good thing John has a poker face to play cards against Death, because if he didn’t, turning around to face their visitor would involve embarrassing gaping. As it is, Santino just raises his eyebrows. “Don Barzini. What a charming surprise.” Santino says _charming_ the way most people say _godforsaken_. 

Barzini just laughs. In this light, the shadows carve the lines and planes deeper into his face. “I told you I was coming a few days ago. You approved it.”

That would explain why Santino was in a dark mood hanging up the phone a few days ago despite reassurances that the Five Families were only up to the usual level of bullshit. Santino gives him a withering glare. “I assumed you were full of shit.”

Except if John knows Santino, he knows there’s no chance in hell Santino offered that invitation unless he fully intended to tempt Barzini into coming.

“It’s your birthday.”

Santino’s withering glare remains. “Because it’s always been such an important event in your social calendar.”

“What sort of partner would I be if I didn’t come to offer well wishes on your birthday?”

“Yourself.”

“Alright,” Barzini says easily, waving his bodyguards back from following him through the door just as easily. Sameen plants herself in their way and Ares blocks Barzini’s progress. Barzini raises his eyebrows at Santino.

Santino takes a drink.

Barzini holds up his arms. Ares is not at all gentle about it and her face when she steps out of his way says she’ll be even less gentle next time she gets in his way. He only spares her a glance and a sigh. “We need a word.”

Theoretically, Barzini could be one of the Sicilians here to plead his case. Fredo Corleone is here to do the same, after all. But there’s nothing any of them could say to Santino here that they couldn’t say over the phone. The point of being here is to be seen negotiating, and unlike the Corleones, Barzini has kept his ongoing communication with Santino completely private. Santino’s face says as much. “You own a phone.”

“I do.” Barzini strolls in front of the other painting Santino uncovered and pauses in front of it, waiting. “But some words are worth saying in person.”

“You detest parties.”

“My wife would point to forty-odd years of marriage in protest of that.”

Santino hums, taking a drink with both feet firmly planted. “Where is Sandra, by the way? I suppose I ought to stop being a rude host.”

“She’ll forgive the offense. She’s in New York.”

“Doesn’t know you’re here, then.”

“She doesn’t involve herself in every aspect of my business.”

“That’s what we’re calling this now?” Santino stares Barzini down but still doesn’t move. “Business?”

“Not entirely,” Barzini allows. “It’s impossible to be all work at one of Flora’s parties.”

“You. Detest. Parties.”

“Don’t be stubborn.” Barzini says it like he finds it amusing. “We’ve had our fair share of parties.”

“You detest sharing my attention.” Santino finally steps forward within a few feet of Barzini at the painting.

Barzini’s smile deepens as soon as he does. “Even so. Few men can work a room like you can.”

They’re almost aligned with the painting, this one of two men embracing. At least, John thinks that’s what’s in the mirror, because he can make out a man in a suit with his arms closed around a second figure who also looks to be in a suit, holding the other man still in a private moment from a reflection that no longer has a source. The problem is that it’s no longer clear what that private moment is—the first man’s face is just visible, quiet and private, but the second man’s face, most of his body, in fact, is entirely lost in the cracks webbing out from his partner’s touch. “So you wanted to watch me work a room while you had a word. A word that’s worth flying across the Atlantic for, to show your face at Flora’s party, because it’s not entirely business and your wife doesn’t know you’re here.”

The fading sunlight on Barzini from this angle shows the lines in his face even more, the gray in his hair brought out by the red lights. More so when he smiles. “You sound like you want to ask me something.”

He says it like he’s inviting Santino into another room. Santino enunciates every syllable, making each one stick in the floorboard nails. “Why are you here?”

“Why did you invite me?”

The fading gold light from this angle makes Barzini old, but it makes Santino magnificent. “Whoever told you you’re charming when you’re stubborn was a liar.”

Barzini’s face reads something like _it was you_. Then there’s a moment when John thinks Barzini will launch into a speech like a movie villain or something, to the tune of _you can’t just take what’s rightfully ours_. But this is not a movie, and Barzini is full of surprises. “Someone wants to kill you.”

Well, that’s different.

Santino snorts. “Plenty of people want to kill me. Damien Moreau just tried.”

“Not that idiot Moreau. Someone with a plan. Long game.”

Santino’s sigh sinks into a growl at the end. “If someone had a plan, do you really think Caroline wouldn’t have spotted them by now?”

That should deter Barzini. Caroline’s sixth sense about dangers heading for Santino is all but mythical. Instead, Barzini settles into his stance, setting his shoulders and meeting Santino’s eye without blinking. “Then you understand why I’m concerned.”

“What I _understand_ is that your sense of timing is truly breathtaking.” There’s a second where John thinks Barzini might give Santino a proper migraine, an increasingly realistic concern these days. Instead, Santino fixes a look on Barzini like he’s contemplating his success in repainting the walls with the contents of Barzini’s skull.

Barzini does not look as frightened of that look as he ought to be. He doesn’t look frightened at all. “While I admire the fact that you’ve never feared death a day in your life, there are significant consequences attached to your death.”

“Preserving your interests, as usual,” Santino mutters into his glass.

“Give me a bit of credit. At the moment, you and my interests happen to be the same thing.”

“I’m quite familiar with your _interests_.” Santino’s expression says there are liable to be significant consequences if Barzini continues to annoy him. “It’s a party. Mine, to be exact. Which means it’s neither the time nor the place.”

“Then name a time and a place.” Barzini says it like it’s a challenge.

“You’re determined to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?”

“About as determined as they are to kill you,” Barzini says lightly. “Which is very.”

Sameen and Ares are staring down Barzini’s bodyguards in the doorway. Which means John’s the only one close enough to see Santino’s lip twitch up. An invitation. “Meet me at the Continentale tomorrow morning.”

“My room?”

“Dining room. I have to have a word with some affiliates over lunch.”

“Not private enough.”

“It’s as private as you’re going to get.”

“Santino.”

“As far as anyone is concerned, you’re here to negotiate with me. You can do that perfectly well in the dining room. More private and they’ll think you’re convincing me to cut Vito out.”

“Ten?”

“Eleven.”

“So that they can see me leaving?”

“You need to be seen leaving. The lesser Families have affiliates here who will chirp the news of a direct appeal.”

“Meaning you want the entire dining room to hear.”

“Then tell me who you don’t want chatter to travel to. Because right now it sounds like you’re inventing a monster under the bed to get my attention.” It rings against the cold stone in the tone of an order. _Give me a good reason_.

Any of Santino’s lesser bosses would straighten their spines at that order and scramble to show their usefulness. Barzini just meets his eye.

Santino raises his eyebrows. “There’s no one here to hear you.” Meaning _security is spread out too far_ and _there aren’t any cameras in here_ and _your phone was confiscated before they let you leave the parking garage_. 

Barzini doesn’t talk.

“Then we’re settled. In the meantime,” Santino holds out his glass to Barzini, “have a drink. Enjoy the party. I’ve been told there will be cake soon.”

Barzini takes the drink and sips it, meeting Santino’s eye over the rim. “Eleven. Continentale dining room.”

Santino steps around Barzini like he bores him. “Post one of your men in the dining room and wait ten minutes after I arrive to make an appearance. Try to talk me into moving and we’re done.”

Barzini’s eyes follow Santino’s progress out of the room. “Of course.”

Sameen and Ares herd Barzini’s bodyguards into the room, leaving them to hover around their boss like flies and leaving Santino’s way clear. Only for Santino to lean back into the room halfway out the door, bringing John up short behind him. “Oh, and Emilio?”

The flies stop buzzing. Barzini never stopped watching Santino.

“Wait ten minutes and loop around to the party from the parking garage entrance. I assume you know the way with minimal camera oversight. Lose the glass in the interim.”

Barzini smiles into the glass. “Of course.”

Santino just turns and swans down the hall. Not before closing a hand over John’s jacket and tugging him to follow.

John catches Sameen murmuring to Ares. _That was weird, right?_ But then Santino leads them down the stairs, into an alcove still out of sight of the party so he can tidy John up. Not really tidying. Fussing.

Which gives John just enough time to discern the thought swimming half-formed in the back of his head. “Did you know Barzini would show up in there?”

“No.” Santino glares daggers at the ceiling, so it’s probably true. “I thought he would send one of his men to ask me to the parking garage later in the night.” He scowls, brushing a bit of lint off John’s jacket. “Or hoped the GPS would send them to Florence.”

Sadly for him, Caroline had other priorities for the evening. “Did you know he was going to tell you that?”

“I had a guess. He’s been dancing around something for a while and wouldn’t tell me over the phone.”

“That’s why you invited him?” Santino didn’t so much invite the Sicilians and Calabrians as agree to hear out their pleas in person, but still.

“Do you think I invited him for my health?”

And that way lies the other concerning path this could take. “You alright?”

That earns him a flash of a dead-eyed stare. “He’s not about to give me a migraine, if that’s what you’re asking. I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

It’s not, but it’s a fair enough answer. “Any chance that what he said is true?”

It’s amazing the ceiling doesn’t spontaneously combust, the way Santino glares at it. “Plenty of people want to kill me. It’s not news.”

“Any chance someone slipped past Caroline?” Caroline would set him on fire if she heard him suggest she could have missed someone trying to kill Santino, but it still bears asking.

“Her AI isn’t omniscient, so it’s not impossible. If someone were obsessively careful. Or, more likely, not significant enough to classify as a direct threat.” Santino fiddles with his tie while casting an eye toward the security camera down the hall. Too far to hear them and for Caroline to be mortally offended. “He’s been plying me to send you back to New York all summer.”

John knew Barzini was working Santino to send him back. By the sounds of it, it’s been going on longer and more frequently than John noticed. “Sounds credible if he’s asking you to have me deal with it.”

Santino mutters under his breath, almost to himself, “If I know Emilio, and I’ve known him for entirely too long, parties aren’t the only area he detests sharing my attention.” He sighs and glances toward the hall again and speaks before John has time to contemplate that sentence. “If there was anything credible enough for him to hear about it, I’d already know and he wouldn’t be tiptoeing around telling me. He certainly wouldn’t give in and agree to see me in the Continentale dining room.”

In other words, odds are Barzini is putting in a valiant effort to make a nuisance of himself. “Want me to kill him?”

John tries not to sound too hopeful about it. By the amused look on Santino’s face, he fails. “Yes and I would pay excellent money to see it, but unfortunately, I need him alive. And more importantly, I refuse to let him dictate how I spend my time.” Santino finally stops fiddling and gives John a warm look that throws them right back to standing in front of the painting before Barzini got there, as if Barzini doesn’t exist. “How we spend our time. Especially today, when there so many better things we could be doing.”

John returns the warm look. He didn’t know he knew how, but you learn something new every day. “Not being careless and enjoying it?”

Santino glances again and, finding no one but Ares and Sameen, steps back out of view of the camera to kiss John quickly in the alcove. “Exactly.”

He steps out of the alcove just in time to hear Flora crow, “There you are!” and trot up to him with Mikkel and Astrid in tow. “I was just about to drag you back into being polite.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” Santino says drily, looking proud.

“And don’t you forget it,” Flora says, looking equally proud as she hauls him back into the hallway. “Where’s your drink?”

“Set it down somewhere.”

Flora gives John a knowing grin she probably would not be wearing if she knew who Santino actually lost his drink to. “I’ll bet you did. Come on, Mischa will have the cake out any time now.”

John steps to follow them, only for Ares to catch his sleeve and tug him to face her. _You know, for all that he didn’t set out to be a dick, his sense of time and place for actual conversations is impressive._

There are rare moments when John wishes Santino was a normal person. Like when they stumble into an actual conversation at an event and forget Ares and Sameen sitting on top of them.

_Offer still stands, you know. Even when you don’t have your heads shoved up your ass._

_Which offer?_

_An open ear. If you want to process_. Ares glances at Sameen heckling Mikkel and Astrid. _Not quite the same experience, but still. Us gays have to stick together._

 _Thanks_.

“You two coming?” They turn to find Santino and Flora arm in arm, looking at them expectantly. Santino’s face when John meets his eye says they’re not at all done not being careless and enjoying this. Especially the latter. So John falls back into step in the radius of Santino’s warmth.

And while he never loses track of Barzini once he appears, absent the glass to greet Santino warmly as though they didn’t meet ten minutes prior, it’s not enough to dampen his spirits. The benefit of a party this size is that Santino can’t focus on any one guest for too long, and Barzini clearly isn’t in a mood to draw undue attention to himself when he could work the room and let the party take care of the rest. More importantly, Barzini doesn’t seem to have left a lasting impact on Santino. Not when Santino periodically meets John’s eye with a certain glitter in it just for John to see.

Mischa’s cake wins her applause from the entire party and one of the boys dragging her out into the garden to accept her thanks from Santino and Flora with the look of a victorious warlord surveying her spoils. John thought the cake would be an anatomically correct bleeding heart, given that Mischa’s show-stealing hor d’oeuvre for the evening is prosciutto-wrapped fig hearts impaled on tiny swords. Instead, it’s a tiered chocolate and pomegranate cake dressed in intricate marbling of inky blue accented with red and gold, draped in swirls of white atropa belladonna flowers whose edges are gilded gold. Then again, Mischa still has her fun—the guests collect their cake while eyeing the flowers with a nervous awe that says they’re reasonably convinced Mischa would poison them just because Santino thought it was funny.

Everyone except Bianca. “Life is more fun when lived dangerously,” she says cheerfully. “Also, I recognize fondant when I smell it.”

The party gets wilder after that, courtesy of the late hour, the faster beat of the music coming from the Terrace of the Bosco for those inclined to dance, and collective giddy relief at the mass-poisoning-that-wasn’t. Flora halfheartedly berates Santino not to be a square at his own party, collects Gianna and the rowdier cousins to head up to the Terrace to not be squares, and winks at John on her way.

Santino might have waited hours to sneak John away to kiss him, but John has been waiting days to sneak Santino away from the party. So he waits until Santino breaks away from a conversation to catch his eye and slips right behind Santino’s shoulder to murmur in his ear while looking out at the party as if scanning for threats. It’s the same posture they’ve slipped in and out of all evening when John needed to let Santino know of a guest’s arrival or give him an excuse to exit a tiresome conversation, but this time, his voice is lower, and the heat in it carries. “What do you say to a more private celebration?”

Santino stays looking out at the party, his working-the-crowd smile still in place and a private smile rising on his face that he hides behind a sip of his drink. “Caroline’s apartment?”

“I was thinking Flora’s. Bit more breathing room.”

Which isn’t entirely true. Caroline’s apartment isn’t an apartment any more than Frick and Frack are actually named Frick and Frack. It’s a palazzo on Via Salaria across the way from Villa Albani inherited from Santino’s Nonna Claudia. She calls it an apartment as an inside joke—Santino and Flora told her they were looking for an apartment for her only to surprise her with Claudia’s former residence under renovation. Technically, Flora’s place has more breathing room, but that’s hardly a fair comparison considering that Flora’s place is a Rosalia hub and therefore has fifteen guest rooms in case Flora ever needs to call the family home for war, not counting the rooms she permanently maintains for Santino, Caroline, Gianna, and their respective primary bodyguards.

Santino gives him a look through his eyelashes. “True, but Gianna’s right next door at Flora’s. Caroline has her all the way in the far corner of the house because she loves me. And I have no intention of inviting spectators to this celebration.”

Flora’s place has soundproofing fit for World War III in the heart of Rome with Rome none the wiser and doors made of solid steel with locks that would make a Swiss bank vault cry, but the point stands. Fortunately, Flora already threw John a bone on that front. “Flora has Gianna sharing a room with Bianca at the other end of the house. Something about using Bianca as a security blanket to bond with the cousins.” Technically, Flora’s exact words were _use Bianca as a throwing shield to beat the cousins into hiding so the two of them can gossip in French all night like a pair of thirteen-year-old girls_ , but that’s neither here nor there.

“Then we let Gianna bond with the cousins and take our celebration to the other side of Rome.” Santino’s smile promises exactly how much fun that will be.

Sadly for him, John’s on a mission. “Plenty of room in Flora’s for the kind of celebration I have in mind.”

“Plenty of room in Caroline’s too.” Santino’s eyes smolder in the low light. “Almost a whole floor to ourselves, in fact.”

“I’m trying to be suave here, considering that you’re not the type for the kidnapped-in-a-runaway-car fantasy,” John ignores Sameen snickering in the background, “but I need you to work with me.”

Santino tilts his head, his eyes flickering alive with curiosity. “You have something in mind?”

“Giving you a gift.” John takes Santino’s drink and sets it on a nearby table. “Or a few.”

That wins him a spark of delight, a purred, “Seems I need to make the rounds then,” and Ares, signing _smooth_ when Santino turns his back and cackling when John flips her off.

It takes a while, but at long last, they’re in the car. Absent the noise, John’s ears ring. It’s just as quiet in Flora’s palazzo, which bears the signs of recently arrived Rosalia and Arafa cousins but is empty except for Flora’s staff. Wadsworth simply opens the gate and smiles as he waves them through, reassuring them their rooms are ready and waiting.

The hike up to the fourth floor never felt quite as long, but now that they’re finally alone, Santino smiles like John’s the best thing he’s seen all year, pulling John with him by his shirt without a care for the amused looks Flora’s staff give them as they pass.

 _Flora’s got you fake set up in Frick’s room down the hall_ , Ares signs when they finally reach Santino’s room in the top corner, next to Flora’s master bedroom and perched on the opposite side of the house from the many guest rooms. _We’ll make it look lived in and leave the key locked inside. Just don’t forget to creep over there if you don’t want to have The Talk with the Rosalia and Arafa cousins_.

There are a number of benefits to Flora’s palazzo being a modernized Rosalia hub. The industrial soundproofing, for instance. Or the passages and crawlspaces in the walls and ceilings that make it possible to pass from the topmost corner to the bottommost corner on the other side and never once be seen in the hallways. _Thanks_.

 _Have way too much fun_ , Sameen signs, grinning ear to ear as they close the door to make their way to their own room across the hall to have way too much fun.

Santino laughs as soon as John turns the light on. Flora’s gift is already hanging on the wall to greet them—Klimt’s _The Lovers_ , because Flora is nothing if not the worst. “At this rate, she’s going to commission a love letter as one of her hurufiyya and plaster it on my door like a teenage rock poster.”

“That or get a statue of Achille and Patrocles.”

Santino laughs again, bright as the gold in the painting under the light. “Sounds like her kind of joke.”

John comes up behind Santino to rest his arms around him. “Good thing she already has marble statues everywhere. And they already know you’re a pretentious snob who loves Klimt.”

Santino hums a vibration John can feel in his chest and turns in his arms with a smirk that makes the lovers look downright virginal. “Good thing they’re not here.”

“Would be a bit awkward.” But the family is in Villa Medici and Santino is here and John could not factually give less of a fuck about the family when Santino kisses him like he’s been starving for it. Or when Santino pushes into him as John walks him backward toward the bed.

They both stop short when Santino reaches a hand behind him and runs into crinkling paper—a small package wrapped in gold paper and a navy ribbon. “What the hell?”

John wondered where Flora put that. Figures she knows them that well. “Your gift.”

All the sneaking around is completely worth the delighted look Santino gives him as the ribbon slips onto the floor and the paper slips free. Then Santino gets a proper look at what’s inside, and stares.

It’s antique sheet music of Beethoven, Piano Sonata No.30 in E, op.109, twenty minutes of a crystalline surface hiding great intricacies of harmony and spinning itself into a delirium of ecstasy before subsiding into a blessed sense of homecoming. “I couldn’t figure out what to give someone who has everything,” John says quietly, suddenly afraid to shatter the moment as Santino keeps staring at the music, “so I tried to find something that reminded me of you. I thought about a record, but you like playing better than listening. And then Flora told me it was Massima’s favorite. It felt fitting.”

Santino blinks, jerking up from the music to stare at John with wide eyes.

And suddenly, the whole gesture feels frighteningly small and personal, like John just hopscotched across a gulf without realizing its magnitude until he looked back and saw Santino staring at him from the other side. “It’s kind of stupid, I know.” Except it comes out halting, because he already jumped across the gulf and Santino saw him do it and now he can’t take it back. “You definitely already know how to play this, so you don’t even need sheet music anyway—”

Then Santino steps to kiss him in a way they never do. Tender and slow and savoring. The kind of kiss meant for leaping to follow and landing on both feet without a care for the distance. “It’s perfect.”

“Good.” John rests a hand on Santino’s cheek, admiring what’s in front of him. Marveling that he can keep this one good thing. “Starts us off on the right note.”

Santino’s lip quirks in a way that makes John want to kiss him again and not stop. “Right note?”

“Well, yes. That’s your gift. But I promised you a celebration.”

“You did.” Santino sounds freshly delighted by the prospect. “What kind did you have in mind?”

John reaches around him to pull a black case out of the dresser freshly selected for the occasion. It’s really a good thing that he and Flora have neither fear nor shame about this kind of thing or else he never would have gotten the case in here without Santino noticing. “Dessert?”

“My favorite kind.” Santino smiles with all his teeth and kisses with them too.

Still, much though John would like to get on with celebrating, there are practical matters to attend first. “We should probably cover the cameras. Just so Flora’s security doesn’t think I’m trying to kill you.”

“Who says we need to give them a soundtrack? Because I have no intention of sharing this show.”

“You’re not quiet.”

“And if you let me be quiet tonight,” Santino quips, stepping around John to the nightstand, “I would be very put out.” He reaches into the drawer and produces what looks like a small tablet, but attaching it to a waiting cord in the wall and unlocking it brings up nothing but a map of the room with green dots where the cameras are.

“What is that?”

“Nothing Caroline can use to listen in,” Santino replies, tapping one of the green dots. “Short-range scrambler. Caroline built them herself to cut off the camera feeds.”

“You sure that’s going to work?”

“Considering that I have one just like it in the house, yes.” At John’s skeptical look, Santino sets it on the bed and uncovers one of the hidden cameras. “Look. See? Dead as a doornail, lens closed and circuit open. And no, Caroline can’t hack it.” He taps the cord in emphasis. “Local hookup only. She’d have to manually wire into the local system. Now go lock the doors and put the phones away. If someone wanders in here short of the biblical apocalypse, I’m going to have to kill them.”

The benefit of Flora living in a modernized Rosalia hub: unlike Santino’s house, which has passages built approximately three centuries ago as hideaways and escape routes and could theoretically be broken with a good effort and a lot of noise, Flora’s passages were rebuilt by Massima and Elena after the fire that killed her parents and are therefore vaults to which three people have the master key. Neither of the other two people have any interest in using it short of actual war, a reassuring thought given the number of guests staying in Flora’s house for the occasion. Which is to say that it takes John longer than it should to catch up (until he puts the phones in their black bags, actually), but in his defense, he’s thinking of other things. “Wait. You have one of those at the house?”

“In the bedroom. And one at Caroline’s, just in case,” Santino says lightly, setting it out on the nightstand. “We use it to kill the cameras for training every morning. Bit more refined than the old method of switching off the circuit breaker and capping the lenses.”

“You mean we could have not given the boys a show this entire time?”

“Well _excuse me_ for being distracted because _someone_ is talented with their hands.” Santino’s still smiling with all his teeth, the shit. It softens as he carefully moves the sheet music out of bleeding range.

“Good thing no one can see this flavor of talent. Otherwise, they really would think I’m trying to murder you.”

Santino laughs, a soft sound not at all like his party laugh, one that sounds like it’s just for John. “Are you here to murder me?” he says softly, and when he turns back, there’s nothing left but the real Santino looking back at him. Watching, without any masks in the way to soften his smile now that they’re well and truly alone.

“Come here,” John breathes, though he’s not sure how.

Santino smiles wider, and he comes.

Santino fucks with no sense of pain, no limits and no shame. He fucks like he wants to murder and be murdered, and afterward, he likes to be held. Maybe it makes him feel human. Maybe it's the only way he understands affection. For better or for worse, it's the only way John knows how to give affection, a byproduct of the only thing he's ever been truly good at.

So John gives affection the only way he knows how and feels Santino’s exhales as the knives work over him, the teeth he sinks into John between _more more more_ like he would tear John apart just to keep the pieces for himself. Hears him scream and cry like beating fists and a lover’s caress, babbling in broken Italian and Russian and then just incoherent sound when his voice gives up. Tastes blood and sweat and lust on his tongue as Santino catches him in kissing and sets his teeth in John’s voice box to swallow all his words down. Watches Santino’s eyes blaze bright enough to blind. Watches Santino come undone.

Watches Santino watching him the whole like he’d go blind the moment he looked away, covered in blood and breathless from overstimulation and pulling John into him further even through the high pleading _there faster harder more_ until he can only cling and shake and sob as John follows him.

And afterward, holding each other in the murder scene they made, holding onto each other like they’re the only thing worth holding onto, John marvels.

People think the real Santino is the one with the emotive capacity of a cadaver, the one with a blank space where his heart ought to be that turns his pretty smile and prettier blue eyes as cold and cruel as a mortician’s knife poised to unravel someone from the inside out. It’s not. Not quite. It’s truer than many masks Santino wears, but it’s not true either. It’s another face, the real version of him weaponized into something frightening, protecting himself as much as it harms anyone within cutting range.

The real Santino is just as cruel and cold and vicious as any of his masks, but without all the noise diluting him into something soothingly human. He’s the silence that rings after the last gunshot. He’s the breath before _all clear_. He’s the pause between heartbeats when a target comes into view and the exhale when they fall.

He’s beautiful. The kind John has always told himself he’s not allowed to want, for the same reason he’s never been able to keep anything good. But then, if there’s one thing Santino has never been accused of, it’s being good.

“You’re staring,” Santino says into John’s shoulder the next morning. Which is not to say he’s not staring back.

“Best view in the house.” It’s John’s new favorite morning pastime, drinking in Santino in all his glory before all the layers of affect slip in place to render him into something like a man.

Santino laughs, his voice catching on the ragged edges from last night that sleep hasn’t smoothed over.

Naturally, that’s when a knock sounds on the door. Santino glares at it and lays back on top of John to play dead.

“You alive?” From the other side of the door, Flora’s voice sounds like she’s talking through a fish tank. “Open up. It’s just me.” Meaning _there are no cousins around_.

“We could ignore her,” John murmurs, because there’s no way Flora can hear that from the hallway and he doesn’t want to share yet.

“Then she’ll use her key and I’ll have to kill her,” Santino sighs, rolling off John to stand and giving him the second-best view in the house on the way there. He only opens the door enough to stick his head out, regardless of the fact that Flora’s blocking the view into the room from her side too.

John can feel Flora’s grin from across the room. “Good morning to you too, sunshine.”

“What do you want and how fast will you go away?”

John can feel Flora’s grin widen from across the room. “You look like you had fun. Sound like it too.”

Santino didn’t put on a shirt on the path from the bed to the door, leaving plenty of John’s handiwork on display through the sliver of the door. “Did you want something?”

“Caroline wanted to make sure you’re alright. Everything’s still dead in there.”

“Because it’s not at all weird that Caroline knows that,” Santino says drily.

“We created a monster.” Caroline could hear Flora’s fondness a full floor away, regardless of whether or not she’s currently watching the hallway security feeds.

“Do I look alright?”

“Sweetie, you look _fantastic_. But you probably want to make yourself family-appropriate within the next thirty minutes or so. Zainab will start breakfast soon.”

“Everyone’s awake?”

“And impressively bushy-tailed. Gianna’s making noise about meeting with Akoni on her own.”

“Meaning you want me to deal with it.”

“It’s almost as if we’ve raised her for twenty-one years.” Flora doesn’t sound sorry about it either. “I’m the friendly detachment giving you a thirty-minute warning to put your family face on and appear downstairs with your dignity intact.”

“The joys of parenting.”

“Indeed. Also, you might want to knock on John’s door on the way through. I thought I heard him rustling and told the cousins not to bother him, but I can’t hold them off embarrassing ogling forever.”

Meaning _don’t forget to be convincing_. “Noted.”

“Turn everything back on before you give Caroline a coronary!” Flora calls through the closing door.

“Guess that means we have to look convincing and turn the cameras on.” John doesn’t get up, though.

“We have thirty minutes.” Santino doesn’t turn anything on, though. Nor does he remove the phones from their Faraday bags. Instead, he clambers back into bed with John.

Not that John’s complaining, but still. Time limits and all. “Am I in for it with the family?”

“They’re all too afraid of you to bother you. They’ll probably just stare.” Santino runs a finger over teeth marks in John’s shoulder. “Sadly, I’m not so lucky.”

“The joys of parenting?”

Santino snorts without looking up. “Among others.”

“Can’t hurt to give Gianna a bit of leash. Especially with the sudden infusion of arms dealers.”

Santino switches to a different set of teeth marks. “I’m more worried about Gianna than the tourists.”

“Then send her with more than the usual security. Or Rosalia cousins. Between Bianca and Claudia, even Gianna couldn’t manage to get kidnapped.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Santino’s hand goes still over John’s heart. “Gianna wants to kill me.”

John rolls his eyes. “Average Friday, then. What does she think you did now?”

“Ah, sorry. Poor choice of words.” Santino finally looks up at him, his eyes glittering as they only do in preparation for an excellent punchline. “I mean Gianna wants to hire you to kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If that ending didn't get an involuntary screech, I will be very put out. 
> 
> Oh, you thought that bit back in LA when John woke up from a safety flicking off was just good fun, did you? Surprise! Apparently, according to a study, our brains scan for information while we're asleep--the brain ignores gibberish and processes only sensical recordings, you're more likely to wake up to the sound of your name than someone else's, and mothers are more likely to wake up to their own baby crying than another baby. That's why you can doze on a train and jolt awake when your stop is announced--the brain scans in short bursts, more often when we're first asleep, making the decision whether it's safe to sleep deeply or not. Red Room training is a fictional extension of that, wherein training fucks up your ability to sleep deeply and teaches the brain to be far more attuned to potential threats by screening even minute sounds (a safety click, for instance) as a threat. The rest is hardwired habits, which don't require any conscious thought and therefore don't require someone to be awake or aware to complete them. The Rosalia version is actually harder, since John was only taught to attack any perceived threat whereas Santino and Flora were taught to differentiate and control their reaction, which requires a higher degree of consciousness. In any event, here's the study: https://www.smh.com.au/national/your-brain-is-listening-and-processing-while-you-sleep-20190114-p50rak.html
> 
> Marella and Salvatore D'Antonio were significantly drawn from Marella and Gianni Agnelli, though that's not their final characterization. I won't tell you the couple that contributed to their finalized characterization because it would spoil something important if I write the sequel to this, but I will say to read two Vanity Fair articles: one that Marella Agnelli wrote about her married life (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/09/marella-agnelli-the-last-swan), and the other written about the Agnellis after Gianni's death (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/05/gianni-agnelli-200305). One notices a rather different cast in Marella's version of the story after reading the latter. "Anglo-beceri" is a term Marella Agnelli uses to describe her own childhood, writing, "It was inhabited mainly by wealthy Anglo-American expatriates, like my mother, and members of the old Italian aristocracy, like my father—a set of people who spent their days visiting one another’s exquisitely refined gardens and crumbling villas on the hills of Florence and getting into interminable philosophical disquisitions."
> 
> Hope you had fun with all the family Easter eggs, by the way. They were great fun to write. You didn't think the family was just nonexistent, did you? Also, I picture Gigi as Elizabeth Debicki, who is gorgeous and also 6'3". For context, that's one inch shorter than Jared Padalecki, a literal moose, and taller than Keanu Reeves, and that's before introducing high heels. Bianca is tiny and, unlike Flora, does not wear heels. So picture tiny terrifying Bianca in a black suit next to towering Gigi in a lace cocktail dress firing shots back and forth for the whole party. Free dinner theater, D'Antonio edition. I love Bianca so much. 
> 
> I owe the wonderful gingerpolyglot big for helping me conceive of this party. Hope you enjoyed it, because it was grand fun to write. Also, Villa Medici is real, does actually have a yearly Resident Fellow of the French Academy, and is among the most exclusive venues in the world, because Flora and Santino don't know the meaning of the word 'low-key affair'. Also, Michelangelo Pistoletto is a real artist and his Mirror Paintings are real. Google them. They're fascinating. 
> 
> Also, I hope you got the warm fuzzies from that little scene of Santino and John in the studio. I wrote it and have read it like twenty times at least and I get warm fuzzies from it. 
> 
> Ah, Barzini. You figured Barzini out yet? I feel like I'm hitting you over the head with it, though I promise you can't guess the cherry on top of...whatever the hell that is. *winks* *cackles* *screams* *runs*
> 
> There is a reason Flora's house is that ridiculous. You'll get it in exactly two chapters. I told you we go for slow burn up in here. Things are finally moving. Halfway in. Good God, we're halfway there. 
> 
> John's gift is sheet music for one of Beethoven's piano sonatas. He wrote 32, the last three of which are a trilogy. The first is the loveliest. I lifted that description from somewhere but can't remember where, but it's a true and beautiful descriptor. 
> 
> Hello Santino, darling. You're wonderful and high-key terrifying and kind of a total asshole and I love you and so does John. Fortunately, you picked the shadow under the stairs to get up to the weird stuff with, so, you know. My favorite psychopathic flaming disaster gays.


End file.
